


It will be written

by MirandaTam



Series: Jedi Shmi AU [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attack of the Clones AU, Coruscant, Gen, Jedi Shmi AU, Relationship Discussions, Slavery, World Exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 16:32:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7581628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirandaTam/pseuds/MirandaTam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Chaos, yet harmony.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The Clone Wars are coming; many truths will be revealed, but which ones will stay hidden?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, everyone! This has taken a while to get up, and as always I'm not going to promise a steady update schedule, though I'm going to try for one. It's been, what, three weeks? I got a job at a summer camp, and have since decided that no, really, I'm never having children, ever, so even though I _wish_ I had a backlog to pull from, I'm flying in this just as blind as all of you :D (except for some key plot points :D :D :D)
> 
> I haven't tagged this one "Everybody Lives;" like I said, though I have an idea for the general shape, I'm really not sure if everyone *is* going to make it through this. I'm not gonna kill off any of our main characters (afaik) but if people want a warning before any good guys in general die, let me know and I'll post a warning if it happens.
> 
> Title from the Prince of Egypt, as usual.
> 
>  
> 
> _I am Egypt! The Morning and Evening Star; if I say "day is night" it will be written! And you will be who I say you are._

Shmi Skywalker is not a storm, but the Jedi may as well be, for all they clash over her.

She hears the whispers in the corridors when she passes, when Anakin passes – calling them heretics, calling them saviors, the best or the worst thing to happen to the Order in millennia.

We’re just people, Shmi thinks, rather exasperated, and goes out to the gardens to breathe when the attention swirling around the halls presses down too hard on her.

The sheer green of the gardens, the scent of damp air and soil, the cool breeze – even after ten years, Shmi sometimes thinks how wonderful it is that these things exist. This garden – one of many, in the temple, including a desertlike one that she’s grown herself – is one of Shmi’s favorites to sit and meditate in, or think in, or just nap in when the urge and the moment presents itself.

And the urge certainly is presenting itself, with Shmi barely returned from a mission on Quermia that hadn’t been as dangerous as some, but had unfortunately required a reasonable amount of vigilance, and her dreams for the past week have been… strange. Metaphors and animals and words she can’t quite hear, caught on the wind and torn away. The gardens, she hopes, will provide either clarity or respite; either would be welcome at this point.

Her plans are in vain, though; there’s an initiates’ clan having their free time in the garden. The initiates look to be around seven or eight, developmentally; once she looks closer, she recognizes a few of them. This clan is one she knows, and one that knows her, which means that no doubt any moment there will be children asking her to–

“Master Skywalker!”

“Master Shmi!”

“Shmi Shmi come _play_ –”

“You’re it!”

“I can’t be it,” she solemnly tells the little muun child. “How can I be it… when _you’re_ it?” She taps the child lightly on the head and darts off, mindful of the childrens’ average speeds.

Of course, around the third time she becomes ‘it’ because various children have latched onto her legs and held her there for their friends to tag freely, she stops playing _quite_ as nice.

“You can tag me if you can _reach_ me,” she tells the many disappointed eyes from the safety of a tall tree. “Think of it as a challenge.”

“It’s fine when they’re just playing,” another voice says. “But when they actively start trying to trap you…”

Shmi looks over for her companion hiding in the tree and smiles. “You could have warned me, Kallei,” she says.

Kallei, a teenage zabrak, just flashes her teeth and shakes her head. “But it was so much _fun_ to watch you stumble into the same mistakes that I made previously. A true lesson, Master Skywalker.”

Calling her _Master Skywalker_ is just mockery, from Kallei, who knows perfectly well to call her _Shmi_ ; a gentle force-push sends her out of the tree and into the crowd of younglings.

Kallei lands carefully, balanced on her hands, as Shmi had known she would; she doesn’t stay that way long, however, as she’s quickly swarmed by younglings.

“I’ll judge how fun it is to watch someone get defeated by children,” Shmi calls down.

“I regret the day I met you!” Kallei calls back up. “You, who leave me to my _doooooom_ … No, no, I tagged you, fair and square, you’re it,” she tells a twi’lek. “Even if it was on the lekku, it still _counts_.”

Kallei is one of the beings that the less complimentary Jedi call “Skywalker’s strays” and the less opinionated Jedi call “the older initiates.” Kallei had been the first one to come to her, six years ago, all twelve-year-old wildfire and determination and knowledge that no Jedi would choose her as a padawan before she turned thirteen.

“I’m a padawan myself,” Shmi had said. “I can’t choose you–”

“That’s not what I’m asking for,” Kallei had said. “You – you were chosen as a padawan when you were _thirty_. I’m just asking for more time. They’ll send me away to the AgriCorps in two weeks. I know my place is _here_ , that I can find my place here. I just need more _time_.”

The resulting council meetings had taken longer than the two weeks Kallei had, between the arguments and the philosophies thrown back and forth, between the sideways insults and outright demands. It had only ended when Obi-Wan Kenobi had asked her, politely, to leave the council room for a few minutes; when she had returned, the councilors were all looking off to the side, ashamed, and Kallei had been welcomed back into the Jedi Temple for extended initiate training.

At sixteen, her fire more focused but her determination still going strong, she had been accepted as a padawan learner by Mace Windu.

And now, at eighteen, she’s getting mobbed by younglings.

Shmi settles back into the tree, making herself comfortable, and lets her eyes drift shut, the playful screams of Beldon Clan in the background.

Twenty-seven minutes and nine seconds later, she falls out of the tree, a dream on the backs of her eyelids, a scream trapped in her throat, and the distant rumble of a bomb going off somewhere in the background.

Dragons, she thinks dizzily, then thinks _Padmé_.

She coughs, once, twice, three times, then turns to Kallei, who’s staring solemnly across at her, the younglings clustered together behind the zabrak. “There’s been a bombing on the landing platforms for the senate,” she says. “Someone go find Master Yoda, please.”

A youngling leaves at a run.

“Is that what you dreamed about?” Kallei asks, her eyes wide but her hands steady and her voice calm.

Shmi shakes her head, still blinking afterimages out of her eyes – bathas and krayt dragons and swirling sands.

The gardens have given her dreams clarity, but not peace; if anything, her dreams are heralding the opposite.

“Master Yoda’s in a council session,” a youngling says – the messenger, returned and almost out of breath. “They wouldn’t let me in, even though I had _news_.” The child sounds so indignant it brings a smile to Shmi’s face, despite the circumstances.

“It’s all right,” she reassures the youngling. “I’ll just leave a message for him on my comm, telling him what I need him to know.”

“Where are you going?” Kallei demands. “You just got back from a mission, you need _rest_ –”

“Next you’ll be telling me to meditate more, too, and turn in my classwork on time,” she teases Kallei gently. “I _will_ be fine, Kallei. I just need to go investigate some things.”

There’s a feeling in her gut telling her that this is the beginning of something.

 

* * *

 

The landing platform is damaged, but still floating; though the ship had been completely blown apart, the marks on the platform are mostly superficial.

Shmi walks the perimeter of the platform twice, once looking for blast patterns and markings, and once breathing, smelling, feeling.

Shmi knows this type of bomb, can smell the chemicals in the air and see the patterns the blast made. It’s a specific type of chem-blast, available nearly anywhere that has a black market and built to cause as much damage as possible. 

“How many fatalities were there?” She asks one of the guards.

The guard gives her a small bow. “None, Lady Jedi, praise all their luck,” they reply. “A few mild injuries, from debris and the like, but the Senator and her entourage were mostly unharmed."

It was more than luck that nobody was harmed.

The blast, she’s heard, went off just as the Senator – or her decoy – was greeted by the chancellor; if it had been meant to kill, it would have gone off in midair or as the Senator was disembarking from the ship. 

This was a warning, at best; a threat at worst. 

Either way, there's someone out there with a grudge against Senator Amidala, and Shmi is going to find out who it is.

Luckily, she knows just who to go to to find out who’s been coming and going on Coruscant. The official Customs and Travels Department has reasonably good records, but they can hardly monitor the comings and going of an entire planet, let alone those who actually _want_ to go unnoticed. But there are many things more reliable than official documentation.

Gossip, for example.

“Don’t tell me you’ve torn your clothes already,” Lannai says when Shmi knocks on her door. “For all that you ruin a shocking amount of fabric, you were just here last week.”

Shmi laughs and shakes her head. “And here I was, worried that you’d somehow dismantled your heater again. No, I’m just here for a bit of information, today.”

Lannai’s eyes light up with a sharp gleam. She’d outright told Shmi to come to her for information a few years ago, after a particularly nasty mission that would have gone better with a little more information. “You hear all sorts of things in a market,” Lannai had told her. “You know this. And whatever I’ve missed, someone else has heard; we all need information to survive, down here We help each other out. You’ve helped me out; now let me help you.”

Shmi is never sure whether Lannai knows exactly what she does or not; the residents of the lower levels tend to be mostly ambivalent towards Jedi; less so about Senators, who every Coruscant resident has a surprisingly strong opinion on.

“This wouldn’t be about that explosion out on the landing pads, would it?” Lannai shakes her head. “You’re going to get killed one of these days, investigating things like this.”

“Perhaps,” Shmi says, and feels a brush of the Force. “But if it will, that day is far in the future.”

Lannai sighs. “I’ve got no clue about explosives, or where they’d come from; you know that you want one of the Too-un clan for that. I’ve heard, though, that the Trade Federation has been unhappy with Amidala for years. They’re rich; they’ve either got an army of hunters to throw at her till her guards slip, or they’ve hired the best of the best. Most folk know that Naboo officials have too many decoys for most bounty hunters to get through.”

Shmi nods. “Are any of those best of the best on-planet right now, that you know of?”

“Hmmm.” Lannai taps her fingers, opaque nails clicking against the plasteel table. “Information like that is dangerous.”

Shmi inclines her head a tiny bit in acknowledgement, then goes to dig in her credit purse. Lannai is a friend, but both of them know that asking for information on bounty hunters deserves compensation.

“Cad Bane was seen in the lower markets a week and a half ago, looking for a new hat, as he does; Aurra Sing hasn’t openly dared Coruscant in years, but there _might_ have been a sighting last month. Omare Nassshal _was_ on Coruscant, but turned up stabbed in a bar a few levels down from here.” Lannai pauses.

It’s a significant kind of pause. “What else?” Shmi asks. Lannai has almost as much of a dramatic sense as Qui-Gon does.

“There’s a rumor that Sarad is in town,” Lannai says.

Shmi frowns. “I don’t know of that one.”

“A mandalorian,” Lannai says. “Yellow, orange, and black armor, with some fancy white designs. Not one of the best, but getting there; she’s still new on the scene.”

“You think she’s someone for me to look at, though,” Shmi says. A statement, but also a question.

Lannai half-shrugs. “She started calling herself Sarad two or three years ago; before that, she’d vanished for over a year – and before that, the hunters knew her as Shev’la Fett.”

Shmi sits very, very still. It’s been a long time since she’s heard the name Fett.

“She hunted with Jango Fett for a while, when she was starting out,” Lannai says. “She was his daughter, or so the rumor was, but if that was true she’s repudiated him by now anyways. I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of her; she’s got a good reputation for going after people who deserve it, which translates to a small reputation outside of the community.”

One day Shmi is going to figure out how Lannai knows so much about bounty hunters, but today isn’t that day, and Lannai deserves her privacy besides.

“So why did you mention her, then?” Shmi asks. “If she only takes moral jobs, why would she take the hit on Amidala?”

Lannai shrugs again, her luminescent hair sweeping over her shoulders. “All I know is that there was a mandalorian matching her description seen buying chem-blasts from the Too-uns, and that none of the other top hunters seem to be eyeing Amidala.”

Shmi lets out a light breath. "All right," she says. "Many thanks, Lannai."

As she makes her way back up to the upper levels, where she’ll meet Anakin and Obi-Wan to see what they’ve found while guarding the Senator, she lets herself calm, lets her mind become a smooth lake, a still boulder.

Sarad means _flower_ , if she remembers correctly, and shev’la is _silent_ ; it must have been a drastic change, to make her go from silence to blossoms. And for Jango Fett to have been repudiated by a daughter of his…

None of this bodes well, not with the mystery of the Sith that she and Yoda still haven’t discovered. The Sith in the Senate – if they are still _in_ the Senate, and haven’t moved on, or haven’t left to join the Separatist movement.

It’s been years since we made any progress, Shmi thinks. What with the rise of the Bando Gora, the hutts and other crime families gaining more power throughout the galaxy, the rise of the separatist faction, the general unrest and the disaster that had been her knighting on Mon Calamari… it’s time to bring more people into the loop, before it’s too late.

Her comm beeps as she’s getting off a train, with a message from Obi-Wan saying that they’re heading back to Padmé’s apartments.

Shmi frowns. The Senate is relatively secure; Padmé’s apartments are relatively secure.

The travel between them is _not_.

Shmi makes sure her lightsaber is easily drawable, then makes her way with all reasonable speed to Padmé’s apartments.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the streets and in the temple, things are hidden.

Shmi could say that barely arrives on time, but she knows the truth, that this wasn’t an assassination attempt, that none of these were assassination attempts.

She arrives on time to wait in front of the apartments, to see the Senator approach, Anakin and Obi-Wan at her sides. Time enough for Amidala to take a few more steps forward before there’s a slight whistling and something makes a tiny, precise hole in the wall right beside her head.

No warning from the Force, not even a whisper; but Shmi looks to see if the Senator is okay, then runs after the footsteps she hears, the word _why_ waiting on her tongue.

She doesn’t get to ask it.

Shmi returns to Padmé’s apartments to find Anakin alone with Padmé and her guards.

“Obi-Wan’s tracking down the actual sniper,” Anakin says. “Who was the one who you followed?”

“A bounty hunter,” Shmi says. “We can find out more later, all right, Anakin?”

Anakin nods. He knows that she only uses his full name when she needs him to listen to her, right now, no questions asked; it’s part of the secret code they’d had on Tatooine, one they’ve continued using. She trusts that he’ll follow her directions when it’s necessary; he trusts that she always has good reasons, and most of the time will explain later, anyways.

And the Jedi had frowned on attachment.

Anakin takes a deep breath, then reaches his hand out towards the wall, where Shmi can see a tiny hole, smaller than a credit chip.

There’s a small whistling, and a dart flies back out of it, to rest in his palm.

“Poison, I think,” Anakin says, turning it over in his hand. “Not sure from where in the galaxy, but I bet we’ll be able to find out – that’s a pretty unique design.”

Shmi nods. “Obi-Wan will be able to track it down more, hopefully. Meanwhile…” she narrows her eyes. “What were you _thinking_ , taking her through an unsecured area, _knowing_ that there were assassins after her?”

Anakin sighs, deeply. “It was the Senator’s decision. None of us were happy about it, but have you ever tried arguing with her when she has an idea?”

“It really was my fault,” one of the guards says – except the guard takes off her helmet, and it’s Padmé, which Shmi should really have seen coming. “I thought that we should try to lure the bounty hunter out into the open. I didn’t realize it would be that close…” she looks back at the woman dressed as Amidala, then sighs. “Well, Dormé kept insisting that it was an _acceptable risk_.” Padmé practically spits out the words. Shmi gets the feeling that if Padmé had fully gotten her way, it would have been her in the senatorial regalia.

“I choose to take these risks,” The Senator – no, Dormé – calls back to the group. “I know what I’m getting into.”

“The fact that these risks should be necessary–” Padmé starts.

“Are indicative of the depths our society has fallen to and yet they still need to be taken lest we descend further into chaos stemming from you not being able to fix it,” Dormé says without even glancing over. It’s clear that this discussion has been gone over several times. Shmi decides that she likes Dormé, and is definitely glad that she’s not dead.

“Anyway.” Padmé takes a deep breath. “Master Skywalker, it’s good to see you again. Is it too much to hope for that you saw the assassin?”

“I saw the one I thought was the assassin,” Shmi says, “Though the fact that Master Kenobi went in a different direction suggests a feint, which would… make sense, in a very strange way.”

Padmé nods slowly. “Two attempts, and nobody’s died. Lucky for us,” she says, with the particular inflection to make it clear that she believes not a word of what she’s saying. “Master Skywalker, would you be willing to join Padawan Skywalker and myself in my apartments while we wait for Master Kenobi to return? We can discuss future strategies.”

“Of course,” Anakin says, before Shmi can reply.

Padmé smiles up at Anakin.

Anakin smiles down at Padmé.

Shmi gets more of a chance to talk to Dormé as they make their way to Padmé’s apartments.

“It’s wonderful to finally meet you, Master Skywalker,” Dormé says as they wait for the lift.

“I wasn’t aware that I had that much of a reputation,” Shmi says.

Dormé smiles. “Well, firstly, Padmé values your advice very highly,” she says. “She says that you’re one of the few people she’s met in the republic who both wants to enact change and is willing to actually act to do so. Secondly, well, my spouse is from Tatooine.”

Shmi blinks. “Really?”

“Cadi Sandstar, from Mos Eisley,” Dormé says, nodding. “Naboo’s one of the stops of the Freedom Trail; Padmé was, like I said, _really_ impressed by you, and wanted to do more to help. Unfortunately, the hutts don’t really like us getting involved in their affairs, but we do what we can.” She grins at Shmi, wide and brilliant. “Cadi says they’ve never met you, but, well… when one of the mothers of a community escapes and becomes a Jedi Master, of all things, it makes news.”

“I imagine it does,” Shmi says, still rather blindsided. She’d been one of Mos Espa’s mothers, yes, one of the adults who cared for the children and knew the desert and kept their secrets. And of course the Naboo community – there was a Naboo _community_ – would know that she was a Jedi.

Still, being known to people she’s never met is _strange_.

Dormé doesn’t seem put off by Shmi’s quiet shock; she just keeps talking, comfortably social. “You know that the dart missed me on purpose, right? I could just tell, by the timing.”

“I hope you don’t get shot at enough that simply the timing will let you know that somebody is aiming to miss,” Shmi says.

Dormé shrugs, which is… not exactly a reassuring answer. “There’s a typical walk that you do if you’re trying to be calm but also not get hit by a sniper, where you take pauses sometimes and speed up and slow down and all those things in semi-random patterns. So I was walking, and I slowed down, and it hit the wall behind me.”

Shmi nods slowly. “So if you’d been walking normally…”

“It would have missed me by even more,” Dormé says. “So. Who’s not trying to kill Amidala?”

“Who _is_ trying to kill her is still a reasonable question,” Shmi points out. “So, who has a grudge against her?”

“Hutts, drug lords, Trade Federation–”

In retrospect, that one should have been obvious.

“They really just don’t like her, do they,” Shmi says.

“It was probably because of the whole invasion thing,” Dormé says. “And Nute Gunray couldn’t wiggle his way out of prison, not with the testimony of not one but three Jedi. So now we’re stuck with Viceroy Haako, who is less aggressive but still bent on galactic trade domination.”

Shmi has known that the Trade Federation is working with the Sith – they’ve known ever since the mission to Cato Neimoidia where she met Jango Fett.

Who is now trying to warn them.

Not for the first time, Shmi wonders how many sides there are in this hidden conflict that’s been tearing the galaxy apart, and how many they’ve yet to discover.

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan is in the archives, staring determinedly at a datapad, when she finds him the next morning.

“Shmi,” he says before she can greet him. “Have you ever heard of a planet called Kamino?”

Shmi frowns. “Possibly,” she says. “I think… hm. Mostly ocean-covered and stormy, if I’m thinking of the right planet. Xenophobes. Not part of the republic, unless something has changed.”

“Something might have,” Obi-Wan says, still not looking up from the datapad. “Given that I can’t find proof of its existence in the Temple archives.”

“It’s not _there_?” Shmi asks, moving so she can face the screen. “The archives are far from perfect, but to be missing an entire _planet_ …”

“Don’t let Master Nu hear you say that,” Obi-Wan says absently. “According to a friend of mine, the dart is a kaminoan poison dart. He gave me the coordinates, but… the archives show nothing but empty space there.”

“I’m certain that I’ve heard of Kamino before,” Shmi says. “Have you talked to Yoda?”

“He hasn’t heard of it,” Obi-Wan says. “But, as a class of younglings pointed out, the gravitational fluctuations make it _look_ a lot like there’s a planet where Kamino should be. He recommends I go and investigate.”

“I’ll go with you,” Shmi says in a split-second decision.

Obi-Wan’s head shoots up. “ _What_?”

Shmi doesn’t glance around, but she checks with the Force, and feels that nobody is listening to them, nobody is paying any attention. “Did you see the bounty hunter who made the actual shot?”

Obi-Wan nods slowly. “Only a glimpse,” he says. “They’re good at vanishing. Mandalorian, I’m fairly sure, with yellow, orange, and black armor. There was a design on the helmet, but I couldn’t make it out in the lighting.”

“That description matches what I’ve heard,” Shmi says. “She goes by Sarad, or so I’ve heard. And… I caught a glimpse of the mandalorian that I chased down.”

“You saw who it was,” Obi-Wan says.

Shmi nods. “First, tell me what you think of the assassination attempts.” Her explanation will need to change, depending on whether he’s noticed the truth about the attempts or not.

Obi-Wan stares at her for a long moment, his eyes narrowed. “None of them worked. None of them even injured anyone badly, let alone killed anyone. These are warnings.”

“That’s what I think,” Shmi says. “The bounty hunter you followed was Sarad; the bounty hunter _I_ followed was Jango Fett.”

“The one you met on Cato Neimoidia?” Obi-Wan frowns. “So if we go to Kamino…”

“There’s a fairly high chance we’ll meet him, and Sarad,” Shmi says.

Obi-Wan sighs. “Why do I get the feeling that there’s more to this that you’re not telling me?”

“I’m sure I can’t imagine why you feel like that,” Shmi says, and raises an eyebrow. Obi-Wan’s opinion is one she wants here, with the mess they’ve landed themselves in, but even with nobody listening in as far as she can tell, she’s not going to reveal the secrets that she and Yoda have discovered in the middle of the archives. There may be some covert listening device she can’t detect, or someone hiding their presence like Maul had so many years ago.

“All right, then,” Obi-Wan says. “I talked to Anakin about it, but I realize that I should probably mention it to you, too, since you’re now involved – I’m sending him undercover with Senator Amidala. They’ll make their way back to Naboo, where it’ll be safer; miss Dormé will remain as the visible Senator temporarily.”

It’s exactly what they would do if someone were _actually_ trying to assassinate the Senator; if Sarad and Jango are taking risks not killing anyone, this may give them credibility, and if all goes well it may give Anakin and Padmé a chance to get in contact with one of them.

“Well,” Shmi says. “That’s… romantic.”

Obi-Wan gives her a tired look.

Shmi just shrugs.

“Yes, I saw them,” Obi-Wan says. “Maybe this will give them a chance to… I don’t know, get it out of their systems.”

“It’s all right,” Shmi says, taking pity on Obi-Wan – though he was attracted to people, romantically and sexually, it was a far milder attraction than the norm, as he and Shmi had discussed one difficult early morning during tea and post-nightmares meditation. “If it starts distracting either or both of them, I’ll talk to them and see how and if they want to proceed.”

“And if we’re very unlucky, we might even have the attachment section of the code yelled – very sorry, I mean _debated_ – about in this area, too,” Obi-Wan laments.

“I’m sure that everything will turn out all right,” Shmi says. “But if we _are_ leaving for Kamino soon, you should go start packing.” Shmi, of course, has barely started _unpacking_ from her previous mission; it’s just a matter of refolding her clothes and tracking down some wet-world gear.

“I’ll see you in the hangar tomorrow morning, around eight?” Obi-Wan suggests, and Shmi nods.

She doesn’t need to pack, no; that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t need to prepare.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shmi and Qui-Gon discuss her dream; Anakin and Padmé run into a bit of trouble.

Dooku is out of the Temple, off on a mission – Shmi’s not sure where, but that’s hardly rare for Dooku. Yoda is in the Temple, at least, but bogged down by Council work; he hears her dream, hears what she has to say, but he has never been the best interpreter of dreams.

She and Yoda discuss their safeguards, though – things are getting more dangerous, and if the Sith are behind the attack on Padmé, they need to start getting things done.

They’ll be telling certain people throughout the Order about the Sith; she’ll tell Obi-Wan on their way to Kamino, and Yoda will explain to most of the other Jedi they plan to tell.

It’s a mix of Jedi they’ve chosen, to carry a mixed amount of knowledge. Some old, some young, some active, some practically retired; they need this information to stay safe, and they need it to survive should something happen to both of them.

Yoda will tell most of them, yes, but Shmi will be the one to talk to Qui-Gon.

He sits patiently, rather bemused, as she checks over his rooms one, two, three times for bugs, for people listening in, before she sits down and sips at the tea that he’s made her.

“All right,” he says. “What is so sensitive about this dream that you can’t let anyone know about it?”

“There was a krayt dragon,” Shmi says. “A krayt dragon dressed like a bantha, or a gundark dressed like a nerf, or a poison thorn dressed as a sweet fruit.”

“That’s a fairly typical children’s story,” Qui-Gon points out. “Across the galaxy, as shown by your many examples.”

Shmi sighs. “I know, Qui-Gon,” she says patiently, as if to a child. “But when I have the same true-dream every night for a week, I take it as a sign to tell someone.”

Qui-Gon grimaces. “True-dreams–”

“Are valid, despite your disinclination towards the future,” Shmi says. “Are you going to listen, now, or am I going to find Yoda, who will sit you down and make you listen like the youngling you seem to be?”

“I’ll listen,” Qui-Gon says reluctantly.

“There was a krayt dragon, dressed as a bantha,” Shmi says. “And the dragon knew that the banthas’ horns were sharp and dangerous, and cast upon the herd the shadow of a krayt dragon. The banthas ran around, fearful and panicked, around and around until they gored each other upon their horns.”

“That seems fairly straightforwards, for a dream-metaphor,” Qui-Gon says. “Of course–”

“Of course,” Shmi says, “You keep interrupting me. I haven’t told you about the others in the herd, the krayt dragon who was dressed as a krayt dragon, or its parent, the one who wasn’t sure whether it was a bantha or a dragon and instead became nothingness or the sun upon the sands, or about the bantha who was dressed as a krayt dragon and believed it, too, until she tore away her flesh to see if she would burn beneath the suns.” Shmi blinks. “I didn’t remember that part until I said it.”

“This all seems rather pointed,” Qui-Gon says.

“You’re not the one who had to piece it together from half-remembered dreams,” Shmi points out. “There’s a reason this has taken a week.”

“I still don’t understand why you’re telling this to _me_ ,” Qui-Gon says. “Surely Yoda, or Obi-Wan–”

“Yoda knows already,” Shmi says. “And I do plan on telling Obi-Wan. But I need someone else to know in case something bad happens while we’re on Kamino.”

“Kamino?” Qui-Gon frowns. “I don’t know that planet.”

“You wouldn’t,” Shmi says, and makes a decision. “It’s been removed from the Temple archives.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yoda and I have known for a while that the Sith Master is hiding somewhere in the Senate,” Shmi says calmly, talking over Qui-Gon’s palpable shock. “We had found a Sith holocron that had agreed to assist us, but she vanished a few months ago, stolen right out of Yoda’s rooms.”

Qui-Gon’s face paled. “But that means…”

Shmi nods. “We have to believe that somehow, the Sith has a way of controlling a Jedi in this temple, willingly or no, knowing or no.”

“How do you know that you can trust me, then?” Qui-Gon asks, his eyes wide and serious. “Knowing or not, willingly or not, means that it could be _anyone_.”

Shmi smiles, a little tiredly. “You, Obi-Wan, and Anakin were all off-planet when the holocron was stolen,” she says. “We have to assume that means we can trust you. If it makes you feel better, you’re not the only one we’re telling; there are a few others we know we can trust, though I’m not telling you who.”

“A good precaution, if we’re dealing with…” Qui-Gon trails off. “The Sith. A spy in the Order itself – Shmi, how long have you _known_?”

“Guessed? For years,” Shmi says. “Known? Just the past few months. Had proof?” She shakes her head. “Never.”

Qui-Gon closes his eyes. “Force. A spy in the _Order_. All right. Fine. With your dream… is our spy the conflicted one? The one who will – what was it – tear away her flesh to see what lies beneath? The disguised one, tricking the nerfs into trampling each other?”

Shmi lets out a small breath, the barest sigh of relief. “That’s another reason I’m telling you,” she says. “Of all the Jedi I know, you’re one of the few who makes these practical jumps.”

Qui-Gon blinks. “The gundark – the krayt dragon – that _is_ the Sith, yes?”

“That was my interpretation,” Shmi agrees. “Yoda wasn’t so sure.”

“This is why I don’t like foresight,” Qui-Gon grumbles. “It’s so _vague_ , can mean so many different things that by the time you’ve sat down and considered all the angles the situation has devolved into something worse than you started with.”

Shmi shrugs. “Except here we are, analyzing a dream and starting to get useful hints. All things in moderation, Master Jinn,” she says, using her mother-voice. “Patience yet action, isn’t that what you’ve been arguing?”

“I suppose,” Qui-Gon says, but of course his dislike of foresight is well-known throughout the order. Prophecies, he argues, are one thing; actual precognition is another.

“Either way,” Shmi says, “You look for answers, and you don’t waste time. But that is also a dangerous trait – _have care, Qui-Gon Jinn, or that will be the end of you_.”

Shmi stops and closes her eyes and makes herself breathe, in and out and in until the faint aftertaste of ozone and words not hers has faded from the back of her tongue. Speaking prophecy wouldn’t be half as annoying if she had some warning before it happened, at least.

Out, in, out, in, wrap yourself in warmth, she thinks. My body, my mouth, my tongue, and the vestiges of dissociation fade away.

“Well,” Qui-Gon says. “How can I be reckless after that sharp warning?”

“I have no doubt,” Shmi says drily, “That you’ll continue being precisely as reckless as you need to be, much to the complaint of the council.”

“You know, I think they’ve started to warm up to me, though,” Qui-Gon says, just as drily as Shmi. “Oppo Rancisis barely sneered at me when I passed him in the hallway yesterday.”

“Wonder of wonders,” Shmi says. “He used to corss to the other side of the hall when you appeared, didn’t he?”

Qui-Gon nods. “And Saesee has even stopped rolling his eyes whenever I speak.”

“Next thing you know, Master Windu will acknowledge your presence,” Shmi says, and they both laugh.

Qui-Gon always laughs like he hasn’t laughed in years, like the whole world is dull until he turns around and sees that there is still joy. Of all of the Jedi that Shmi has taken under her wing over the past ten years, to teach them how to breathe, how to feel, how to let themselves live, he has been one of the most determined to learn; it hasn’t always been easy for him, and it’s been harder in some places, but Shmi sees how he lets himself love the worlds and people he meets and knows that both of them are glad he’s learned.

Shmi knows that Yoda’s line has had hard lives – Dooku losing his padawan Komari Vosa, Qui-Gon and Xanatos, Obi-Wan’s early life. She’s glad that Qui-Gon still has that joy in his life.

He has that joy, yes – but how fragile is it? She wonders. They have _no_ idea who the spy could be – they could be a distant acquaintance, they could be a trusted student, a teacher, a friend.

They could have the power to rip Shmi’s family apart from the inside out, if they knew enough.

Qui-Gon, Yoda, Dooku, they have already been ripped apart in thousands of ways both small and large. If the spy is a friend, how much will it hurt them?

Qui-Gon deserves forewarning, if so – they all do. But Shmi doesn’t know if the forewarning is needed.

For the moment, all they can do is wait. Fortunately, Shmi knows how to be patient.

She can only hope that the other Jedi do, as well.

Qui-Gon sighs, for a moment looking as tired as she feels. “Force be with us all,” he says. “We’re going to need it.”

“We are,” Shmi says.

 

* * *

 

“There’s someone following us,” Anakin says.

“Are we sure it’s not Dormé or your mother?” Padmé asks.

“Fairly certain,” Anakin says.

For all that anyone else should know, they look just like a random Naboo couple on their way back home, Padmé’s hair up in a style but covered with a draping cloth, marking her as wealthy enough to have time to do her hair, but not _quite_ wealthy enough to have it done professionally. There wasn’t much to be done about Anakin’s hair, other than concealing the padawan braid, but with the clothes Padmé had picked out he looks like an offworlder married into the culture, which is close enough.

Nobody should have a reason to follow them unless they know who they are.

Of course this mission couldn’t be relaxing, Anakin thinks.

He fakes a grin and turns his head to whisper in Padmé’s ear. “We need to get them off our trail before we get on the cruiser.”

Padmé giggles – a beautiful giggle, even though it’s a fake one – as if she’s just heard him say something funny, and elbows him lightly. “Can we lose them in the alleys?”

Coruscant’s alleyways, even on the top levels, are a maze, full of muggers and trash and excited young offworlders looking for a shadowed place to kiss.

“That sounds wonderful, darling,” Anakin says. Because a pair of young offworlders is what they’re pretending to be.

[Should I go to the transport with our bags?] Artoo beeps at him.

“No, stick with us,” Anakin says. They definitely don’t want their follower following Artoo ahead of them to the cruiser.

Padmé tugs on his arm. “This way, dear,” she says. “Oh, isn’t this so _exciting_?”

Nobody in the crowd gives them a second glance, except maybe to roll their eyes.

The dark alleyways are familiar to Anakin – his mother had started taking him out to explore Coruscant more when he turned thirteen, Obi-Wan tagging along out of “responsibility,” though really he and his mother both knew that it was curiosity. He knows Coruscant’s streets as well as he knew Mos Espa’s, and he leads Padmé through the twisting alleys with confidence.

They can speak a lot more freely here, though they still have to be quiet; no reason to let the muggers know where they are.

“Do you still do mechanics?” Padmé asks. “You seemed pretty enthusiastic about it as a kid.”

“I do, yeah,” Anakin says. “I’ve mostly been focusing on larger-scale things, engines and ships and speeders, things like that, though I’ve dabbled in droids and tools and computers.”

Padmé nods, seemingly perfectly at comfort in the shadowed alleys, stepping over broken glass and shredded flimsiplast and things that Anakin doesn’t really want to know what they are. “I don’t know a lot about mechanics, though I do know some basics. Politics doesn’t really leave time for much else.”

“You don’t regret it, though.” Anakin slows down, listening with his mind. There are people up ahead – who, though?

“Not at all,” Padmé says. “Change may happen slowly, and with great struggle, but it still happens. I help change happen. I help _people_. I may wish I had more time for other things, but I could never regret it – are those people up ahead?”

Anakin nods. “I’ve been watching them,” he says. “I think they’re headed in our direction.”

Padmé frowns. “Can you tell who they are?”

The beings up ahead aren’t exactly quiet in the Force. “Bounty hunters, I think,” Anakin says. “Three of them.”

“They’re getting closer,” Padmé says. “What should we…” she glances around. “Okay. Come over here.”

Anakin follows her over to the alcove she’s indicated, Artoo following behind him. “Now we stay quiet and _hope_ they don’t notice us?” He shakes his head. “We’ve got the element of surprise. I can take out one before they notice, then engage the others while you take Artoo and run–”

Padmé shakes her head. “New plan,” she says. “Kiss me.”

“ _What?_ ”

“We’re just another pair of young lovers, remember?”

“Yes, but–”

“Ani, kiss me!”

The people ahead of them round the corner.

“Hey, who’s that?” One of them calls out.

Padmé reaches up, laces her hands behind Anakin’s head, and pulls him down.

“Ah, just a couple of kids,” someone says. “Come on, we need to get to the spaceport on time.”

Once the group of bounty hunters has moved on, Anakin pulls back slowly.

Padmé stares up at him, and Coruscant’s lights look like a star-field reflected in her eyes.

“Have you done that before?” She asks him quietly after they’ve gotten their breaths back.

“No,” he says, just as quietly. “I–”

[We need to _go_ ,] Artoo beeps.

Anakin takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Artoo’s right, we need to go,” he says. “But those bounty hunters were heading to the spaceport. They were looking for _us_.”

“How could they know?” Padmé says, then shakes her head. “That can wait. We need another way off-planet.”

“Actually, it’s pretty relevant,” a new voice says. “And, actually, I’ve got answers for most of your questions, if you’ll follow me.”

Anakin and Padmé spring apart, turning to face the newcomer; Anakin’s hand goes to his lightsaber.

There’s a mandalorian woman standing in the alleyway, her arms crossed. Her armor is faded orange and yellow, with black gauntlets and boots, but that’s not really what catches Anakin’s eye.

No, the white suns on her helmet and the bright white krayt dragon roaring on her chest seem a little more relevant.

“If we follow you, how do we know you won’t just shoot us?” Padmé asks, always practical.

“Well, I could have shot you while you two were… occupied,” the mandalorian says. “You didn’t even notice me getting here. Nice job, Skywalker.”

Anakin glares at her. What does she know? That’s – that’s not _relevant_ , it…

It’s pretty true. This is probably why Obi-Wan keeps talking about attachments being distractions.

He’s _attached_ to Padmé, he realizes with a little thrill. That’s…

Not the time, he forces himself to think. “Still. How do we know we can trust you? We don’t even know your name.”

“You don’t really have much choice,” the mandalorian says. “You can head over to your transport if you want – but those other hunters you fooled are already on their way there, and they’ll be waiting for you. You can find another way to Naboo, but to answer your other question, Senator, those hunters knew how to find you because there’s an informant for the Separatists on Queen Jamilla's council. Or you could make your way across half the planet back to the Jedi Temple – but you don’t have a secure enough comm to call for help, so smart money’s on you running into more bounty hunters than you can handle. The Federation’s going all out to get you killed, Senator.”

Anakin looks at Padmé; Padmé stares at the mandalorian long and hard, and he can feel the conflict churning in her mind. It feels like something clicking into place when she makes her decision, turns, and gives Anakin a tiny nod.

“We’ll go with you,” he says. “A short distance, to a safe place where you can tell us your plan.”

“Fair enough,” the mandalorian replies, sounding amused.

“On one condition,” Padmé adds. “What do we call you?”

The mandalorian stares at them for a long moment, but something – the Force – tells Anakin that mostly she’s staring at him.

“Sarad,” she says finally. “My ship’s this way. Let’s move before any more hunters show up.”

Any more than you, Anakin thinks, but follows, Padmé a bright presence at his side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, in a move as surprising to me as it is no doubt to many of you, this fic will apparently have a few scenes of Anakin's POV, to keep up with the scenes where Shmi isn't there. Also, that scene was pretty much 85% inspired by CATWS.
> 
> Also, I marathoned both seasons of rebels over the course of three days, so... sorry if bits of Sabine leak into Sarad, or... well, actually, we might not notice Ezra leaking into Anakin. Both those kids make _so many bad choices_.
> 
> I'm going to be trying to go for a monday-wednesday-friday update schedule again; as always, we'll see how it goes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arrivals

Obi-Wan listens to her, his eyes serious, waiting until she has the whole dream, the whole story, all their suspicions out before asking questions.

“You think that it’s someone close to us,” he says, which isn’t really a question but which Shmi takes as one, anyways.

“I’m _worried_ that it’s someone close to us,” she corrects. “I… when I was telling Qui-Gon, I prophesied at him, out of nowhere. If he’s reckless, he’s going to get himself killed. And when is he at his most reckless?”

“When he’s lost someone, or thinks he has,” Obi-Wan says. “Which isn’t necessarily an indication that we’ll have a betrayal, but… it _feels_ worth considering.”

Shmi nods. Obi-Wan’s precognition is fairly weak, outside of fights, but with Qui-Gon as a master he’s spent a lot of time focusing on making it more reliable than average. He may not see much, but when he does, he knows what to listen to and what to let be.

Kamino looms before them as they drop out of hyperspace, Shmi and Obi-Wan both silent on the descent through the planet’s upper atmosphere, both thinking about the future, near and far.

Kamino is dark and wet and stormy, but for all of that there’s something here that inexplicably reminds Shmi of Tatooine.

“It’s a dangerous planet, from what I’ve heard,” Obi-Wan says when she tells him. “Is that the similarity you’re feeling?”

“No,” Shmi says. “There’s something else.”

Obi-Wan sighs when she doesn’t elaborate, and walks out into the rain. Rain has always felt like a gift; the cold, not so much. Shmi pushes the rain aside above her, making it look like she has one of those fancy repulsor-umbrellas; she’ll be dry when she gets inside, at least.

Obi-Wan makes a face at her; she rolls her eyes. If he wanted to charge ahead into the pouring rain before asking her for help, that was his choice. She does push the rain away from him, too, though.

They’re five paces away from the doors when Shmi’s comm beeps.

Both she and Obi-Wan turn to stare at it; it’s a short-range comm, and shouldn’t be able to get any communications from far away. Someone on-planet is comming her.

Shmi answers it.

“This is a pre-recorded message, before you try to say something,” says Jango Fett, his voice but no projection emanating from the comm. “Osik, but I hope they can’t track this. All right. Listen. Things have gone from bad to worse to even worse than that; you are _not_ going to be happy with what you find here. I screwed up, I know that, but they’ve got Boba and… and others that they can hold against me. There’s a small community – look, Kelin said yes to the job but only if her family could come, and I had enough credits, so I freed the whole community, and a good portion of them followed her here; I’m sending you the coordinates to the structure where they live. I… osik. I’m not explaining this well at all.”

Shmi is starting to figure out what feels so similar to Tatooine; part of it is the danger, yes, the sheer indifference of nature to the tiny beings living on the planet. Part of it is the tatooinians she can sense even from here, now that she thinks about it, that taste of desert and determination and the familiarity of people she’d lived with for years.

Part of it is slavery.

“You’ll be well within your rights to kill me once you find out what I’ve done,” Jango’s message says. “Just wait ‘till I’ve explained it all, all right? There aren’t many safe places we can talk, you might have to provoke me into running away so we can meet somewhere off-planet. But even that’s going to be risky. They – you know who I’m talking about – they have eyes _everywhere_.” Something about the emphasis Jango puts on _everywhere_ sounds important.

“This is sounding less like a plot and more like a conspiracy,” Obi-Wan says quietly.

“Oh,” Jango says. “And, before I forget, Naboo’s not safe. My – Sarad, she’s taking Amidala and your son to Tatooine, to some friends of hers. Nobody’s gonna think to follow them there, as long as they lay low. Don’t worry about them. But remember: there are eyes everywhere on Kamino. And…” his voice is laden with guilt that Shmi can feel even from here, even from a recording. “I’m sorry. I know there’s no way I can make up for what I've done.”

The comm clicks off, and Shmi and Obi-Wan are left with nothing but the relentless rain and the echo of Jango’s voice.

“Well,” Shmi says. “Let’s see what we’ll find, then.”

 

* * *

 

 

It’s quieter than he remembered, out in the openness of the desert. It’s also strangely louder, though; maybe he just never really thought about the way the desert sounds, the way the sand seems to whisper across the dunes, the way that animals’ cries echo across the emptiness, out into the sky.

Anakin could have hated it here, he thinks; hated the way the heat of the suns beats down, the way there’s already sand in his shoes. It’s not exactly what he’d call _pleasant_. But he’s seen the way his mother clings to the desert, and he wonders what she remembers about it that’s so worth holding on to.

“Home,” Sarad says, standing still and staring up at the bright suns, mirrored in paint on her helmet and in light on her visor, staring up at the endless sky, reaching out, forever blue.

“You haven’t been back since you left?” Padmé asks.

Sarad shakes her head. “I know others who did, but first I never had the time, then I never had the reason, then… then I never had the option.” She stands silently for another moment, then shakes her head and strides forward. “We’re close to the town I’m thinking of. Let’s try to get there before midday.”

Anakin and Padmé exchange a glance, then follow Sarad. There’s a story there, and they’re going to find out what it is.

There’s also a story in why they landed in the open desert, so far away from the settlement they’re going to, but Anakin knows that story already. The only towns you don’t land near are secret ones, the ones you don’t want the masters finding out about, the ones you don’t dare risk being tracked to, for everyone’s safety. Anyone who needs to get there already knows how to travel through the open desert, or has a friend to guide them.

Anakin’s honestly not sure which applies here – it should be obvious, Sarad should be their guide, but it feels like there’s a compass needle in his chest, pointing where to go, tugging him along.

The settlement they find is unfamiliar, probably built in the years Anakin’s been gone, but the people are achingly familiar.

There’s Melee, and Ashal, and old Jira, who’s even older than he remembers her being, and–

“Ani?!”

“Kitster!” Anakin grins as the other boy pushes out of the crowd that’s gathered to greet them.

“Brother,” Kitster says quietly, then grabs Anakin is a strong hug.

Anakin breathes in – the dry wind and the dusty sand, but also the laughter around them, Kitster’s joy, the smell of people, and community, and _family_ , and he understands why Shmi and Sarad still call Tatooine _home_.

“Welcome to – well, in basic, this is Storm’s Eye,” Kitster says, and Padmé turns sharply to face him.

“This is the Hub?” She asks.

Kitster stares at her for a long second, eyes narrowed, then relaxes. “You’re from Naboo, aren’t you?”

Padmé nods. “I’m involved in some minor politics, among other things,” she says, and Anakin very, very carefully thinks of the times his mom taught him how to keep his face blank. “Part of that is sometimes helping people get settled in on our end and, well, you hear a lot of stories.”

Kitster nods back. “Your planet has been a lot of help to us – to so many people. Thank you.” He grins, then. “And, actually, thanks for those plates your royalty sent over a few years ago – they’ve done a lot to give our protocol droid some credibility, though it’s still tough going.”

Anakin glances over at Kitster. “You have a protocol droid? What am I saying, of course you do if you’ve been spying on auctions and infiltrating palaces, little Kitster, all grown up and playing the cultured man–”

Kitster shoves him, and Anakin shoves Kitster back, and it’s like they’re both nine years old again and arguing over whether his pod was going to work or not.

Sarad snorts and shoves both of them, sending them stumbling forwards, laughing, and this feels strangely familiar, too.

“Where’d you even get a functional protocol droid out here?” She asks. “The plating from the Naboo I get. Protocol droids need to look the part, and nobody does _fancy_ better than the Naboo.” She nods at Padmé. “But protocol droids are not easy to get your hands on, not without attracting attention from all the wrong people.”

Padmé raises one beautiful eyebrow at Kitster, then glances over at Anakin. Kitster grins and nods.

“Oh, _no_ ,” Anakin says.

“Greetings!” Says a voice from inside the house Kitster’s been leading them towards. “I am C-3PO, human-cyborg relations–”

“You just left him in your house when you and Shmi left with the Jedi,” Kitster says. “Which I totally get, he was… sort of a mess. But he was all that Watto had left – it was hilarious, watching him try to get Threepio to sell his junk. Then Watto started spiraling even more downwards. You know the death stick trade has gotten really bad here, these past few years? Well, he got addicted, didn’t even notice when we snatched Threepio on our way out.”

Anakin shakes his head, sighing. “I have to admit, I completely forgot about him.”

Kitster shrugs. “I’m not surprised; you had a lot to worry about.”

Sarad is standing a little ways away, and Padmé is still looking over Threepio, with his shiny golden plates.

“Who’s the mando?” Kitster asks quietly.

“ _What_?” Anakin stares at Kitster. “I thought you knew her.”

Kitster shakes his head. “I know some mandalorians, but not her. She… she knew how to find Storm’s Eye?”

“She guided us here,” Anakin says, the proper phrasing and the proper tone, saying that not only did Sarad know how to find Storm’s Eye, she knew how to cross the desert, too.

Kitster huffs out a breath. “Well, with markings like that, I’m not surprised. A mandalorian, with a krayt dragon and the suns…” he trails off, then shakes his head. “I’m an idiot. I know who she is. Let’s get inside, all right?”

It takes a bit of doing to maneuver Threepio out of the doorway so that they can go inside, but they manage it, and it is _such_ a relief. Anakin may understand why Tatooine is his mother’s home, maybe his home, too, but that doesn’t mean he has to like the heat of the midday suns.

“Threepio, be quiet for a bit,” Kitster says. “We’ve got some serious business to discuss.”

“Of course, Kitster,” Threepio says. “I will go recharge, and – oh, your R2 unit has some _terrible_ language; it was wonderful to see you again, Master Ani – oh, or just Ani?”

“Just Ani,” Anakin says, and it feels strange hearing his childhood name on his tongue.

“Organics these days,” Threepio complains as he follows Artoo out of the kitchen. “I never…”

Sarad shifts a little, drawing their attention. “All right,” she says, and takes off her helmet.

Beru Whitesun gives them a crooked smile, her hair braided in a crown around her head and her eyes as blue-grey as a rainstorm. “Hey, Ani,” she says. “Hey, Kitster. I’ve got some bad news.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I wrote almost nothing over the last two days, then 1.5k last night in the half hour before I went to bed. Life's been fun, guys.
> 
> The upshot of being too stressed out to write is that I now have, like, eight more OCs for Skywalker's Strays! (yes, they call themselves that.) I, because I am a nerd, have pics of them from dollmakers. Here's [Iresar](http://imgur.com/LoZg5Vv), [Kallei](http://imgur.com/lhpHN7s)(who we've actually met), [Kallei v.2](http://imgur.com/2cveekk) (because I'm indecisive about dollmakers, clothes, and lightsaber colors - she doesn't actually have two), and [Zevem ](http://imgur.com/0Kup3iB). God I love dollmakers. My [askbox is here](http://mirandatam.tumblr.com/ask) if you want to come ask me questions about them so I can excitedly rant about characters we may never actually see in this fic!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things going right, and things going wrong.

Anakin needs some time alone, after Beru’s – Beru’s! He hasn’t seen her since he was a slave, and she was too, intent on finding her way to freedom – after her news.

A Sith, somewhere in the republic? An army of clones? It would be unbelievable, if he couldn’t feel the truth of every word she spoke.

But it still feels… wrong. Not wrong in the way that there was evil in the galaxy. Wrong in the way that something was _missing_.

But there are soft footsteps behind him, and Padmé comes up behind him.

“It’s beautiful out here,” she says, and he… agrees.

“I always loved the stars,” he says. “Even when I hated everything else about this planet, I always loved how the stars went on forever.”

Padmé looks at him, curiously. “Do you still hate it?”

He grins at her. “How could I hate any planet with you on it?”

They last about three seconds before they both burst into laughter.

“I can’t believe you said that,” Padmé says, gasping. “That sounds like it came from a, a holodrama, or something.”

“It did,” Anakin admits. “Sometimes I watch them just to see the look on Obi-Wan’s face–” He tries to mimic it, just for a moment, the mix of disgust, horror, and absolute bafflement that Obi-Wan got.

Padmé takes one look at the look and then they’re off again, laughing so hard they have to sit down before they fall.

But after a few long minutes they’re just sitting, staring out at the suns setting over the desert, leaning against each other.

“The Jedi have rules about love, don’t they?” Padmé asks quietly.

“I… yes,” Anakin says. “Maybe. It’s complicated.”

Padmé nods. “Your mother?”

“She’s changing things,” Anakin says. “Making them understand that attachment doesn’t always get in the way of doing what’s right. But… a lot of the time, that does mean putting attachment second. And it’s still new. Nobody’s tried to argue for a… a romantic relationship being allowed.” It feels dangerous to even say the words _romantic relationship_. “What do the Naboo think?” He asks, hoping for a safer topic.

Padmé hums, and he can feel the slight vibration against his shoulder. “We think that people who love each other have a right to be with each other. But in… in households, it’s strange to have two people working. One person works; one person maintains the household, the social life of the family. At least, among my class.”

It’s always a strange reminder that Padmé is from a rich family, even on an already-rich planet. “We both help people,” Anakin says. “In different ways – neither of us are going to give that up. Do we…” He takes a deep breath. “You’re amazing, Padmé. I feel so connected to you – I’m attached already, really. Would you like to have a… a relationship?”

Padmé is silent for a few long moments. “I would,” she says, just as Anakin is starting to get nervous. “But… with both our careers…”

“If we did, we would have to lay low,” Anakin says. “Keep it a secret, or at least not be obvious about it.”

“I don’t know if I could do that,” Padmé says.

Anakin knows that he could. That’s how slaves have their relationships, after all, out of the eyes of their masters – and he’s no slave, not any more, but for half his life he knew that he would have to keep his love a secret, and he still knows how to do it.

But he can feel Padmé’s fear, her uncertainty, and he will follow her to the ends of the universe and beyond, so if she doesn’t think that she can love him in secrecy, there’s no way he can ask her to.

“I guess–” Anakin starts to say, but a wave of _something_ slams into him, the Force screaming a warning, and he scrambles to his feet, spinning around to look towards Storm’s Eye.

“What’s wrong?” Padmé says, standing and looking at him, then at where he’s watching.

It takes him a moment to see what’s wrong, even with the Force guiding him, but when he does his face pales and he almost stops breathing.

“Slavers,” he says. “They’ve found it. We have to leave.”

“We can’t,” Padmé says.

“I don’t _want_ to,” he snaps. “This is the center of the freedom trail, and they’re tearing it apart, but we have to keep you _safe_ , _Senator_ –”

“Not that,” Padmé snaps back, just as sharp, and he can hear the durasteel in her voice. “Anakin, we can’t let them find Sarad.”

Anakin feels the breath he was taking huff out of him, lost to the desert wind. “If they find her, they’ll know she was helping us,” he says, realizing what Padmé means.

“We have to get her out of there,” Padmé says, meeting his eyes squarely. “And if we just happen to blow up some of the slavers in the process?”

Anakin finds himself grinning, even through his desperation. Force, Padmé is beautiful when she’s talking about explosions.

“All right,” Anakin says. “You have a blaster? Great. Stay behind me. Let’s go.”

Storm’s Eye isn’t a battlefield, because nobody wants to waste time fighting back – the only thing they do is run, as far away as they can, to speeders, to ships, to the open desert if they have to. The echoing shots from Beru’s blasters stand out a little; the slavers are all using stunners.

It takes them a few minutes to work their way to the center of town, and during that time Anakin kills slavers and doesn’t feel bad about it. These are _slavers_. If he lets them live, they’ll just go back to slaving.

And even if he did feel regret, he doesn’t any more, after cutting through dozens of shock collars, of handcuffs, of simple ropes tied around people, and seeing _hope_ return to peoples’ eyes.

Beru is just outside of Kitster’s house, surrounded by slavers but holding her own. She’s snarling insults at them in Mando’a, in Bocce, in some languages Anakin doesn’t recognize.

Then she sees them, swears some more, and yells, “Skywalker, _run!_ ”

Anakin ignores her and cuts down two slavers with his lightsaber. “We can’t leave you–”

Something smells strange.

Anakin blinks, his head suddenly… what? Where is he? What’s that in his hand?

There’s a small container leaking smoke into the air, that one of the slavers is holding. Huh, that’s funny. The smoke is brown, which is strange for smoke.

Beru is saying something, but he can’t quite hear her. It’s like he’s underwater. Why would he be underwater in a desert?

“And so the Jedi fall,” whispers a voice, clear and piercing and dark, almost enough to make him push through the fog that’s covered his mind. But then, the voice whispers again.

“ _Sleep_.”

Everything goes dark.

 

* * *

 

Shmi is a Jedi.

She tells herself this, reminds herself with every step on the bright white floors, with every word that spills from the kaminoan’s mouth.

She is a Jedi.

She has taken oaths, made promises, that she will not let her anger control her, that she will contain her fury, that she will be _calm_.

She follows this slave-maker around, and with every step reminds herself that drawing her lightsaber here will be counterproductive, will lead only to disaster, that there are better ways.

There has to be a better way.

She is surrounded by slaves.

Obi-Wan is making small talk beside her, his face bland but his force-presence bleak; she lets him take charge, lets him be the one to ask questions and find the answers they came here to find.

All that Shmi can do is remind herself of the lessons she’s given to Ani, to Qui-Gon, to Dooku about anger, about letting it pass through and flow out and leave no trace behind. This anger does not flow; this anger is more of a cloud, swelling up and swirling around and permeating everything until she can barely see through it. This is the anger that some Jedi find so hard to let go, she realizes. This anger is why Ani still struggles with his temper sometimes, why Dooku may suddenly abandon his plans and choose an unexpected course. This is the anger that Zannah had tempted her with–

Zannah.

Shmi breathes in anger, and breathes out anger, and reminds herself, _patience_.

The helping hand, she had said. She who rusts the chains, freeing not the one but the many – these kaminoans will see the error of their ways, and I will show it to them, but not with a lightsaber to the back.

That will not help the clones.

If she acts now, she will have to fight a whole planet full of kaminoans – and perhaps a whole planet full of clones, if they don’t understand what she tries to do. If she acts now, she can’t free them all.

This is an army. An army meant for the Jedi. If she acts later, some of them may be dead, may be beyond any hope for a new life.

There are no good choices. Obi-Wan’s hand on her arm is the only thing that keeps her moving forwards.

Shmi breathes, and reminds herself that she is a Jedi, and looks around.

The clones are watching them.

Not outright, more than for a second or so, no. But from behind them, from the corners of their eyes, the clones watch them, and whisper to each other.

“They all shine so brightly,” Obi-Wan murmurs to her as they drop back a few steps, letting the kaminoan lead the way. “They’re all so _different_ , in the Force…”

“Even with the same face, they’re all people,” Shmi says softly. “No two people are the same, not even the closest of twins; these clones are no different for being artificially grown.”

“Why did Master Sifo-Dyas do this?” Obi-Wan says quietly. “Why would the Jedi need an army?”

An army of slaves, Shmi thinks, and keeps walking forwards.

Obi-Wan talks his way through an explanation of the ranking system, then talks the kaminoan into taking them to the being they’d used as a template. To Jango Fett.

Shmi does not let go of her anger, cannot and _will_ not let go of her anger, but she forces herself to set it aside, for now. To have patience.

Boba answers the door.

His eyes are narrowed as he looks at the kaminoan, and as he looks at Obi-Wan, but he sees Shmi and he grins.

“You’re Shmi Skywalker,” he says, and Shmi looks down at him and sees the mandalorian clothes in kaminoan colors and the two carefully-cut japoor snippets hanging from his belt. “My sister talks about you all the time. You should come in. Thanks, Taun We,” Boba says, then all but pulls them into the rooms and shuts the door.

The feeling of eyes on the back of her neck, of being monitored, vanishes, and Shmi lets herself lean against the wall, lets herself close her eyes and clench her hands and _breathes_. She grounds herself in Kamino’s damp and ozone-charged air, and she lets her anger drain out of her, drop by drop, replaced by exhaustion.

When she opens her eyes, Jango Fett is standing in front of her, holding out a hot cup of tea. She takes it, but does not drink.

“Boba,” she says. “Can you hold this for a moment?” She hands him the tea, then hands Obi-Wan her lightsaber.

Then she punches Jango in the face.

Her hand hurts, throbbing with pain and anger, all the things she knows to let go, and she does, she lets herself calm, and takes back her lightsaber and her tea and looks interestedly at Jango’s face. He’s going to have a black eye, which is less than he deserves, but she leaves it at that.

“All right,” she says. “Problem solving. What are we going to do here?”

Jango rubs at his face, grimacing. “You know, the face isn’t the best place to hit–”

“I know,” Shmi says calmly. “How closely are the Sith watching this facility?”

“Closely,” Boba pipes up, “But not as close as they’ve done in past years. They’ve got some operation going on on Geonosis, and other ones other places – most of their attention is there.”

“The other army,” Jango says. “A droid army, for the Separatists, just like on Naboo.” He glances at Boba. “I told you not to listen in to my calls.”

Boba replies with something in quick and snapping Mando’a, which makes Obi-Wan snort.

“This other army,” he says. “The Sith are plotting for some sort of galactic war, then – what could be the end goal?”

Jango eyes Obi-Wan warily. “Look, Jedi–”

Now it’s Obi-Wan’s turn to say something in Mando’a. Jango replies in the same language, looking rather thunderous, so Shmi turns to Boba until they decide to have a conversation in a language that she actually speaks.

“Your sister,” she says. “Sarad?”

Boba grins and nods. “She started following Dad around, and eventually he got so exasperated that he just decided to teach her to do it right. Then, when she found out about…” he waves a hand at the door, and his expression darkens. “All this, she repudiated him – he’s not her father any more, even though he was. But she’s still my sister.”

“I understand,” Shmi says. “How…” If one of the tatooinians here knows about this slavery, all of them must know. “How did they find out?”

“I told them.” Boba’s eyes meet hers, dark brown and solemn. “I was seven, and I didn’t quite understand what was happening here, but I knew enough to know that something was wrong. So I asked Kelin, and…”

An answer clicks into place in Shmi’s mind. “Sarad is Beru,” she says, and Boba grins, bright and wide.

“She’ll be upset she didn’t get to explain herself,” he says. “But yeah.”

Shmi smiles, for the first time since she got to Kamino. “I remember that she always wanted to understand everything, through and through,” she says. “Of course that would lead to–”

Across the room, Jango punches Obi-Wan in the gut.

Shmi closes her eyes, asks herself to have patience, then reaches out with the Force and drags them away from each other.

“What is this about?” She asks. “Opinions? Politics?”

“The Mandalorian Reformation,” Obi-Wan says, wheezing a bit.

Jango just growls.

“Fine,” Shmi says. “Jango, I respect your right to hit Obi-Wan. You respected my right to hit you. Everything else can be resolved later, with words, like the civilized people we are, and if you decide that you really need to fight more, that can happen _later_.”

Jango sighs, but nods, and she releases her hold on both of them.

Obi-Wan watches Jango, but makes no move away from him. “We need to get to Geonosis, to try and sabotage the droid army,” he says. “What reason could we come up with?”

“Staging a fight,” Jango suggests. “We spar, I ‘run away,’ you put a tracker on my ship, follow me there.”

Shmi raises her eyebrows at Jango. “And this isn’t just an excuse to fight some more?”

“No, no, it’s a good strategy,” Obi-Wan says. “Do you have any maps of the facility? We’d need to plot out a general course…”

Shmi sits back and watches them plan out the fight. For all that Jango hates Obi-Wan – he hates tightly, curled up against his heart and held in place, but Shmi can still feel it clearly in the Force – they work well together. Obi-Wan’s worked with mandalorians before, she can tell, maybe sometime during the reformation that Jango hated so much.

Just as he and Obi-Wan have finished up planning their choreography, Jango’s comm beeps. He glances around the room and raises a finger to his lips, telling them all to be quiet, and waits for them to nod before answering.

“Fett,” he says tensely.

“It’s me.” Sarad’s voice is strange and wavy, but Shmi can’t tell if it’s because of the interference of Kamino’s weather or not. “Just… calling to check in. Are you good on your end?”

Jango frowns at the comm. “We are. You?”

“We’re all good.” There’s a bit of hissing static. “… utrel’a, Jango.”

“Utrel’a,” Jango says back, still frowning, and the comm clicks off. “That was strange. She doesn’t usually call in just to confirm everything’s going well.” He shakes his head, sighing. “But this is one intense job, and she used the all-clear callsign. I regret the day I even got involved with this mess.”

“Well, with any luck, this will all be resolved soon,” Obi-Wan says. “Then we can all go back to living our normal, boring, tedious lives, as I’m sure we all will do.”

Jango snorts. “One day, that sense of humor is going to get you shot, Jedi.”

Boba is too quiet.

Shmi watches him; he’s frowning at the small comm attached to Jango’s wrist.

“I’ll be right back,” he announces suddenly. “I gotta go check something.”

Jango looks at him for a long moment, but nods. “Make it quick, Bob’ika. Gonna need you to be my getaway flyer.”

“It’ll just be a minute,” Boba promises, and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando'a  
> 'ika - diminutive suffix (Bob'ika –> "Little Boba")  
> Utrel'a - clear, as in "all clear"
> 
> The next chapter may be a little bit delayed; I have part of it written out already, but I also need to pack, and it's my uncle's birthday, and I'm rewatching AotC with some friends so we can mock the bad acting and plot, and also I'm getting sick :P Basically, everything's happening at once, and I'm trying not to stretch myself - so even if I do have a chapter up on time friday, it may be a shorter one.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boba and his plans; Dormé and hers.

Once Boba is out of his buir’s sight and hearing, he reaches up his sleeve and pulls out a comm unit, one of the cheap types that can’t even manage a continent’s distance – but that are cheap and not regulated and can be hidden practically anywhere.

Useful, for keeping in touch with all the clones.

The kaminoans monitor the communications, he knows – well, at least Sosan Hi does, and he’s the one working closest with the Sith. But the thing is, they monitor the comms _casually_. What are the clones going to do? Stage a revolt?

Pass on extra bits of information?

All the clones have different interests, different talents, different ideas. Boba can go to Jump if he wants help with mechanics, 4598 who hasn’t picked a name yet if he wants help with astronavigation, Kix if he wants to learn medic stuff…

Wire, if he wants to know whether the storms could have caused problems with Beru’s call.

It’s not as if it’s inconceivable, that the call would have natural problems. It’s just… the littlest bit off. Beru’s comm relay is kaminoan-style, as it has to be for getting through the storms. The storms that were theoretically causing problems. And that, combined with the odd timing of a call for no clear reason, not to update the situation and not to talk about a problem? She had no reason to call them, but she did. That makes him want to just double-check that it’s not the storm. Even with the all-clear word, utrel’a, saying that everything is fine in both Basic and Mando’a, as they’d worked out with his buir years ago, it feels like something is badly wrong.

“Hey, Wire,” he says, once the call connects. “Got a bit of a question for you.”

Wire sighs, loudly audible even over the comm. “I’m not teaching you how to rewire your buir’s comm to connect to yours again. It’s your own fault if you weren’t paying attention the first time.”

“No, no, it’s not that, of course I was paying attention,” Boba says. “I was just watching this nuh’la holodrama, and the signal kept cutting out – is there any way I can keep the storm from messing with the signal?”

Nuh’la is Mando’a for ‘funny,’ a completely innocuous word that they can use in normal conversation; of course, using Mando’a out-of-context in the middle of a sentence in Basic, or Basic in the middle of a sentence of Mando’a, is the secret signal for _something’s wrong_.

“There’s no way it’s this storm messing with the signal,” Wire says. “If it was a… holodrama… from off-planet – which of course it was – sub-planetary storms shouldn’t even make a blip of difference with the quality, given the kaminoan receiver dishes, no matter which end the storm’s on.”

That’s not good.

“Ori’vor’e, Wire,” Boba says, and drops the call.

Then he dials another number.

“What?” Slick snaps as he picks up the call. “Boba, this had better be important–”

“Slick,” Boba says. “Ke’viinir. Jii.” Then he clicks off the comm and turns and Sosan Hi is standing in the middle of the corridor, in between him and his buir’s rooms.

“Boba,” Sosan Hi says. “What are you doing outside of your father’s rooms at the moment?”

Boba has a special bit of hate in his heart for Sosan Hi, who’s the kaminoan working closest with the Sith. But Sosan Hi is still kaminoan, and for all their cloning they don’t really _get_ humans.

“I was just trying to get some people to play hide-and-find with me,” he says lightly, his eyes wide, shifting his weight back-and-forth slightly, hinting at the childhood markers kaminoans recognized. “He’s busy yellin’ at the Jedi and I got bored.”

“Why don’t I escort you back to your rooms, then,” Sosan Hi says, hands crossed in the kaminoan gesture for suspicion. “Now is hardly the time for games.”

“Oh, I can just call him,” Boba says, and presses the speed-dial button on his comm that routes him straight to his buir. “Dad,” he says, when he only calls Jango his buir when all is well. “I was gonna play hide-and-find with some ‘a the clones, but Sosan Hi says I have to go back to the rooms.”

There’s a pause, and Boba feels a little guilty for making his buir panic, but now they all know that something is wrong, and he can’t feel guilty for that.

“Head to the ship, instead,” his buir says. “There are some repairs that I wanted to walk you through, soon, anyways.”

“All right, I’ll meet you there,” Boba says, then looks at Sosan Hi. “Do you wanna walk me to the ship, too?” He asks the kaminoan.

“No.” Sosan Hi turns and starts walking away. “I believe I will go see if your father needs any assistance, though.”

When Sosan Hi is out of sight and out of hearing, Boba turns and runs.

There’s no way to warn his buir further, not without tipping off the Sith even more; hopefully he and the Jedi will start ‘fighting’ before Sosan Hi gets there.

Hopefully, Slick will have gone through with their plan before the Sith notice.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust his buir or Beru to have good plans. It’s just that… growing up mandalorian has taught him that he needs to have backup plans; growing up listening to the tatooinians has taught him that he needs to have backup plans, and thorough ones. Growing up on kamino has taught him where to push boundaries, and where he’ll be noticed, and where he’ll be overlooked.

Growing up on kamino, his buir and his sister trapped because of the ones they love, has taught him that sometimes, plans need to be secret for them to work.

He’s wandered around the facility enough in past years that none of the kaminoans or his brothers give him a second glance, even for running.

By the time he climbs up into the cockpit, his buir is already fighting the Jedi, blue and green lightsabers against beskar’gam and blasters; Boba takes off, maneuvers around, and catches his buir on the landing dock as he jets between structures. He hovers a moment, giving the Jedi a chance to get a tracking device on the hull, then pulls away.

“That was close,” Jango says as he comes up into the cockpit, drying off his armor. “What was it you needed to check out so badly?”

Boba doesn’t reply immediately, flicking a few switches, plotting out their hyperspace path.

“Storms don’t cause distortions on interplanetary calls,” he says finally. “Not with the quality of comms we have.”

His buir’s realization is audible, a sigh and a groan and a thump as he sits in the copilot seat. “Beru’s in trouble. But she used the all-clear…”

“So someone’s making her,” Boba says. “Something was wrong, but she still used the all-clear. And if they can make her say that, they can make her tell them anything.”

Jango swears, words that he says Boba isn’t supposed to hear yet. “So from now on out, act as if the Sith know. Haar’chak!” He dials in a code on the ship’s comms; after a few seconds, a hologram of Shmi and Kenobi pops up on the dashboard.

“The Sith may be on to us,” Jango says without preamble. “The transmission from Sarad couldn’t have had any natural interference, not with comms built to go through Kamino’s storms.”

Boba sits back as his buir briefs Shmi and Kenobi. Now that they’re in hyperspace, they can’t communicate with Kamino, and Kamino can’t reach them; his plan with Slick may be working and may be falling apart, and he has no way of knowing. All he can do is trust his brother.

“Who are the major players on Tatooine?” Kenobi asks, bringing Boba’s attention back to the hologram. “Who could have taken them?”

“Slavers,” Shmi says, a grim set to her features even through the blue of the hologram. “Hutts, most likely – the two main crime lords on that planet are Jabba and… Gardulla.”

“Jabba’s got a big infrastructure, a lot of supporters,” Jango says. “Gardulla has less, but she’s been benefiting from the drug trade – I know she has some connections with the Bando Gora, at least.”

If anything, Shmi’s look gets grimmer. “We’ll think of what we can do. How long to Geonosis?”

“A little under twenty-four hours,” Jango says.

“We should get some rest, then,” Shmi says, and ends the transmission.

His buir stares at the emptiness where the holograms were for a long moment, then closes his eyes. “You go rest, too, Boba,” he says. “We’ve got some hard work ahead of us.”

We do, Boba thinks. All of us.

 

* * *

 

Dormé can’t help but think that the Jedi Temple is sort of plain.

Don’t get her wrong, it’s grandiose and calming and has some nice architecture; but it’s just not elegant in the way that all the buildings on Naboo are.

It’s also a thousand times more frustrating to navigate than most Naboo buildings are.

It takes her an hour to convince the guard that yes, she would like visitor’s access, just calling the Jedi she’s trying to reach won’t be feasible (this is counting the half-hour it took to pacify the guard after she’d ‘accidentally’ insinuated that the Jedi’s comms weren’t the most secure, which they weren’t). It takes her another half an hour, getting lost twice, to get to Obi-Wan’s rooms – only to learn that he’s been out on a mission investigating something.

“Damn Jedi can’t stay in one place,” Dormé mutters. “Can’t leave a message, can’t leave contact info, can’t even leave a note on the door, worse than the damn Senator herself–”

“Having met Senator Amidala, I find myself having a hard time believing that,” interrupts a deep, amused voice.

Dormé spins around to see a Jedi – one she recognizes, even, from holos and descriptions. “Master Jinn,” she says, and bows a bit. “My apologies–”

“It’s fine,” he says, interrupting her again. “In all honesty, I’ve thought the same thing a few times myself.”

“Not as often as you’ve likely been the cause of it, though, I’d guess,” Dormé says before she can stop herself.

Master Jinn outright laughs at this. “True,” he says. “I’ve been called reckless many, many times. Now, Obi-Wan’s not exactly reachable right now, but if there’s anything I can help you with, I’d be glad to.”

Dormé… hesitates.

Qui-Gon Jinn has a good reputation, even for a Jedi. He’s met Padmé before, and she speaks well of him, for the most part. If Dormé remembers correctly, he was even Obi-Wan Kenobi’s master. If she has to go to another Jedi for help… it may as well be him.

“All right,” she says. “Do you have somewhere private we can talk?”

Master Jinn nods. “I hope my rooms will do. I’ve even got tea, though I don’t stock caf.”

“Tea would be wonderful,” Dormé says, and lets him lead the way through the twisting hallways.

It’s not too long a walk, as he and Master Kenobi’s rooms are relatively close to each other, but after the hours spent trying to get here, it feels like an interminable journey.

When they get to his rooms, though, she forces herself to wait just a little longer, to have patience as he pours the tea and leaves her sitting at the round table he keeps in his kitchen area, the room lit not only by the ceiling light but by the dozens of tiny heat-lamps and colored lights warming and feeding the plants he has scattered haphazardly around his rooms.

“So,” he says, bringing over a warm pot of tea and two steaming cups, one of which she claims for herself. “What can I help you with?”

Dormé takes a deep breath. “You know who I am, yes?”

“One of Amidala’s handmaidens,” Master Jinn says. “Though I’m afraid I don’t know your name, specifically.”

Dormé inclines her head a few inches. “Dormé Ballara-Sandstar. I’m my Lady’s main decoy, since Cordé and Versé were injured during the assassination attempts.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Dormé,” Master Jinn says. “I am Qui-Gon Jinn, which I suspect you know. What can I help you with? I assume this is about the Senator?”

“It is,” Dormé says. “A few hours ago, Senator Amidala activated her distress beacon, which she carries in case of emergencies. Barely a minute later, the beacon was deactivated, probably destroyed.”

All traces of Master Jinn’s humor have vanished, now. “Did you manage to get a trace for the beacon?”

“We did,” Dormé says, meeting his eyes. “It was coming from Tatooine.”

“What in the world are they doing on Tatooine?” Master Jinn says. “I thought they were going to Naboo!”

“So did the rest of us,” Dormé says. “But we can’t exactly blame her this time for changing plans, not after we got an anonymous tip that one of Queen Jamillia’s council was an informant for the Separatists.”

“This just gets more and more complicated, doesn’t it,” Master Jinn says. “Send me the coordinates you got from the beacon; I’ll start there and see if I can track them down.”

“Thank you,” Dormé says, and starts breathing a little easier. “Thank you.”

“It’s just my duty,” Master Jinn says. “Senator Amidala is one of the few Senators I’d say that I actually trust.”

“She always does what she thinks is right,” Dormé says. “However reckless she may be in accomplishing her goals.”

“I will find her,” Master Jinn promises. “And I’ll do all that I can to keep her safe, and Anakin, too. Though I can’t make any promises about the recklessness.”

“As long as you keep your own under control, and don’t take any unwise risks,” Dormé retorts.

It seems for a moment like Master Jinn’s seen a ghost, from the look that flashes across his face. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. “How would you suggest I begin taking care?”

Dormé frowns. “I’m not sure why you would want that advice from me, Master Jinn.”

“Humor me,” he says.

Dormé feels a little silly, giving advice to a Jedi, but oh well. Gods know that she’s given Padmé the same advice enough times. "I always tell Padmé," she says, because it's good to have a starting point for these things, "That the three most important things to have are a way to call for help, backup ready to come, and at least two holdout weapons."

"Two?" Master Jinn raises an eyebrow.

"They expect you to have one," Dormé points out. "Any more than that is to your advantage."

"I see your point," Master Jinn says. "And as for the backup…" he walks over to a console for holocalls and dials in a number.

Another Jedi flickers into blue. "Qui-Gon," he says. "This is rather unexpected."

"I'm sorry to interrupt your rest, Master," Master Jinn says. "But I got a rather urgent alert. Master Yoda is likely still in the council meeting, but I've been recently warned about recklessness, so this…"

"So this is you warning me that you're about to go raring off to the edge of the galaxy again?" Master Jinn's master sounds mostly just amused with his antics. "Where to this time?"

"Tatooine," Master Jinn says. "Amidala's distress beacon activated briefly; I'm going to try and track down her and Anakin."

His master - Master Dooku, if Dormé remembers correctly - is silent for a long moment. "I'll accompany you."

"No, you won't," Master Jinn says cheerfully. "You just got back from a long mission, and I'm leaving immediately. I'd appreciate it if you could let the Council know that I've left and why; I'm syncing up a tracking beacon, too, since Miss Dormé insists I be careful." He pauses. “Though if you really insist, I can take someone else with me – Maybe Master Gallia’s in the Temple, I can check–”

“No,” Master Dooku says. “No, that…” He sighs. “If you’re so insistent that you can do this yourself, who am I to contradict your whims?”

“All right, then,” Master Jinn says, raising an eyebrow. “I’ll send you the beacon’s frequency?”

“Do so,” Master Dooku instructs. “And… the Force be with you, padawan of mine.”

The call disconnects. "Is that careful enough?" Master Jinn asks, turning to Dormé.

"Almost certainly not," Dormé says. "But it's a good start, I suppose."

Master Jinn looks at her then, and his gaze softens. "I will get them back, safe and sound," he says, speaking to her silent fears.

Dormé smiles, trusting that even if he can't make that promise, the Jedi will try his best. "Thank you," she says. "I doubt that there's anything I can help with, but if there is, let me know."

Her way out of the Temple is much smoother than her way in. On the steps waiting for the hovercar, she sees a small, one-man ship depart from the Temple hangar; as Master Jinn blasts off into the blue and the black, she makes a wish upon his contrail that he will find Padmé, safe and soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando'a  
> buir - parent  
> nuh’la - funny, hilarious  
> ori’vor’e - thanks a lot  
> osik - shit  
> ke’viinir - (command) run  
> jii - now  
> haar’chak - damn it
> 
> I said I was going to be consistent, and keep it to just Shmi POV. Then I was going to be consistent, and keep it to just Shmi and Anakin POV.  
> Apparently, I lied. Sorry.
> 
> Starting on Sunday, I'm going to be camping - unfortunately, this means no more updates until next Friday! (Unless I get bored enough to post a chapter early on Sunday.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Journeys in mind, in space, and underground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I'm back! Camping was fun, if exhausting. My character went up like five levels and I died so many times it was almost permanent. I love LARP.

In the time between one nightmare and another, Shmi takes a breath, takes a moment, takes a few hours to meditate.

Her shields are a bit of a mess, shaking and crumbling under stress, under memories. She cannot be stone, cannot be solid and unshaking and certain, not after what she’s seen on Kamino. Who is she, if she cannot help those in need?

 _Patience_ , she whispers to herself, and takes her mind’s eye to the open desert, where the wind races over the sand like a thousand biting knives, and the suns beat down, forcing sweat out of skin and stealing it away, drying a being out until they’re nothing but hair and bones.

The desert has no walls, no chains, no ties; her mind is open, yes, and a being might enter it, might try to steal her secrets, but they will not find them, not in the endless desert, in the endless sky. She will welcome them into her mind, and see how long it takes for them to be torn apart.

But no.

That’s her anger again, the knot inside her that wants to see everything torn to ruin, wants to go back to Kamino and kill the cloners, wants to rush ahead to Tatooine and find those who have taken her son.

There is a time and a place for anger, she has long said, there is a time and a place to use your anger, but not when it will overwhelm you.

She will save the clones, she will save her son, but she will not tear apart the galaxy to do it.

Out of the desert, out of her mind’s eye, Shmi finds bones.

The ribcage of a krayt dragon, its bones bleached burning white by the suns, standing as high as three people; the tail stretched out behind it, vertebrae disconnected and trailing. The dragon’s skull, locked in an eternal roar, and the pearl in its mouth, fracturing and reflecting the suns’ burning light.

Shmi makes these bones into her shield, her armor, wrapping around her as tight as a hug. She, the dragon, roars her anger out into the skies, to the sand and the suns, letting it echo back, letting it dissipate into calm and certainty and still anger, yes, but beneath it peace. Calm.

Patience.

She opens her eyes to find Obi-Wan watching her.

“Well, this is a familiar scene,” she says, evoking the moment so many years ago when she’d put up her first shields to find Obi-Wan watching her.

Obi-Wan blinks and blushes a little. “My apologies. I–”

“No, it’s fine,” she says. “I don’t mind. I’ve always found it relaxing to be around people who are meditating.”

“More than a bit of relaxation is needed at the moment, given the circumstances,” Obi-Wan says, and rubs his face.

“You need sleep,” Shmi says. “I’ll keep watch.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head. “No, not yet. I…” he takes a deep breath. “I should meditate, too.”

Shmi keeps watch as Obi-Wan calms himself down; she can feel him in the Force, smoothing over his tangled emotions, letting himself relax into the moment. She doesn’t know what visualization Obi-Wan uses, for his mind; Yoda’s swamp is almost as familiar to her as her own desert, and Anakin used something much smaller than the biomes that she and Yoda had gone for – a starship worked better as the setting for his mind than anything else he’d tried. But Obi-Wan? What did he use?

Shmi draws the thought out from under her mind’s armor and gifts it to one of the scorching desert winds that carries it to the outer reaches of her mind, letting it float out into the air, clear for Obi-Wan to hear.

Obi-Wan takes a while to respond, but that’s to be expected; he has his own affairs to straighten out before he answers her idle question.

When he does invite her into his mind, though, Shmi’s breath is taken away by the complexity of his shields.

And then she laughs.

Because it’s obvious: it’s Coruscant, all around her – the Temple, and Dex’s Diner that he’s taken her to a few times, the alleyways and skylanes and lifts leading down to the lower levels and the Senate dome in the distance, layered with so many options that nobody would know where to start looking, should they try to enter his mind.

 _It took me more tries than I’d like to admit before I found a mental construct that worked for me_ , Obi-Wan whispers to her.

 _But you were the one who suggested Anakin use a ship for his_ , Shmi says. _You struggled, then you helped Anakin where he struggled._

She can feel Obi-Wan give a mental shrug, brushing off the praise even as she can tell that he is pleased.

Shmi takes herself out of Obi-Wan’s mind carefully, grounding herself back in the ship, the blue glow of hyperspace lighting her face.

They are four hours out from Geonosis.

She wonders if Obi-Wan’s training bond with Anakin is still active, here in hyperspace; she wonders if he could reach her son, if he tried.

Years ago, though, she had told Anakin that what he needed to learn was how to understand when she needed help, and when she could take care of herself.

Does she trust Anakin to take care of himself?

Yes.

Does she trust Anakin to take care of himself, when facing the slave-takers of Tatooine? Is this fear of hers irrational?

The ship’s console beeps; Jango is calling them.

Shmi powers up the hologram.

It’s just Jango this time, no Boba; Obi-Wan is still meditating.

“We should make our plans,” Shmi says.

“I think… we need to talk, first,” Jango says, and Shmi doesn’t contradict him, because he’s right.

“Are we going to Tatooine or Geonosis?” He asks. “I can understand going either way, but if we’re going to Tatooine, we’ll need to adjust our course soon.”

“I know,” Shmi says.

“I’m sorry,” Jango says abruptly. “I – I didn’t let myself think about it. But once I realized that they were all, all of them, my sons, I didn’t know what to _do_. I–”

There’s a question that needs to be asked here, Shmi thinks. Both for her and for Jango.

“What are you looking for?” She asks.

Jango stares at her.

“You have done wrong,” Shmi says. “And now you’re trying to make it right. Why? What are you looking for? Absolution?”

“Forgiveness,” Jango says.

“You know that you may not find it,” she says. “You know that even if you do all you can, she is well within her rights to not grant it to you.”

His mouth tightens into an unhappy line. “I know,” he says. “That doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying.”

Shmi doesn’t know the adult that Beru has grown into, doesn’t know if she’s the type to let go or to hold on to her anger, if she’s the type to forgive a betrayal or if her severed bonds can’t be retied.

Shmi doesn’t know the people that her community has grown into, these past ten years on a planet full of water and storms. But she wants to. “Tell me about Kelin,” Shmi says. “About… all of them. How are they?”

Jango smiles, a small, wry smile, but a smile nonetheless. “I should tell you about how I met Kelin, then – it was early on in the day, and I walked up to her with Boba in my arms…”

Shmi lets Jango’s words wash over her, hearing about friends and family and those she’d left behind. Jango is a fairly good storyteller, and though his sense of timing is a little off he has a gift for setting scenes. Shmi can unfocus her eyes and see the places he’s talking about, the little gestures and occasions and minor disasters that fill his stories of her people. Shmi can unfocus her mind, let her ears do the listening, and know that the Force is whispering to her in its tiny voice that she should go to Geonosis.

Shmi wants to go to Tatooine. Shmi wants to find her son. And if it were Yoda, Qui-Gon, Dooku, any of the Jedi she trusted telling her that Geonosis was the right path for her, she would smile and nod and reset the nav computer for Tatooine.

But it’s not the other Jedi telling her that Geonosis is the right path. It’s the Force itself, the voice of her instincts that she’s trusted since long before she learned what they were.

How can she listen, however much it pains her?

I will do all I can to save my son, she’d said so many years ago. And she had told Ani, that same year, to trust her to save herself.

She has to trust Ani, now, she thinks, listening to Jango talk about people from her world of sand settling into a world no less dangerous than the one they’d come from, and maintains the course for Geonosis.

 

* * *

 

 

_Something reaching, pulling at him_

“Anakin.”

_Darkness, an echo–_

“Anakin!”

Anakin blinks awake, and sees… Padmé?

Her big, brown eyes are wide with worry. It’s too dark. Where are the suns?

Anakin blinks a few more times, and everything comes back into focus a little. “Where are we?” He croaks.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “Another planet, I think. I’ve seen a few sentients, but I don’t recognize the species; some sort of insectoid.”

Anakin grimaces and starts to sit up. “Ugh. Might be Geonosis; it’s less than a parsec away from Tatooine. What…” he remembers, suddenly, what happened. Storm’s eye, the slavers, the strange gas. “We were drugged.”

Padmé nods. “Give me your hands.”

“Why?” Anakin looks down at his hands. They’re bound together with some sort of cuff. “Oh. Why is everything so hard to concentrate on?”

Padmé eventually just reaches over and takes his hands. Her hands aren’t bound; she’s so smart, and skilled. “They drugged you more than me, I think. I woke up a few hours ago and broke out of my cell. I haven’t found Sarad yet, but I’ve seen some… strange things.”

Anakin’s handcuffs click open, after Padmé’s fiddled with them for a bit; he shakes his head, trying to clear it. He’s never been good at clearing toxins from his bloodstream, but this one seems even harder to deal with than usual.

“All right,” Padmé says. “Let’s get out of here and find somewhere safe to hole up and make our plans.”

It’s easy enough to get out of the cell; Padmé had disabled both the locking mechanism and the guards when she’d broken in.

“Where’d you get a weapon?” Anakin asks, really meaning _do you know where my lightsaber is?_

“I always carry a few hidden weapons,” Padmé says. “My handmaidens insisted, and people never expect a Senator to be carrying three miniature blasters.”

So that’s a no on the lightsaber. Anakin just concentrates on following Padmé and breathing, because breathing means bloodflow and blood flowing means it losing the drugs and it’s entirely possible that Anakin may have slept through most of the lesson about cleansing drugs but in his defense, he’s never been good with detail work in the first place.

But as he thinks about detail work, he realizes that something else is missing, here.

“Whatever drug they used is force-inhibiting, too,” he says, almost stopping in his tracks. “I can barely feel _anything_ …”

Padmé grimaces. “All right. We need to find somewhere to lay low, and let the rest of the drug clear from your system.” She looks around as Anakin watches her, finally pointing to a small, darkened crevice. “That looks like it might have enough room to hide both of us.”

It does have enough room to hide both of them, though only barely. They won’t be visible to anyone walking by, as long as they don’t make too much noise, and it’s good that they hide when they do; less than a minute after they’ve gotten settled Anakin’s breath mingling with Padmé’s, two neimoidians walk through the corridor, talking to each other in their language. Anakin doesn’t understand more than a word or two, but he definitely recognizes Rune Haako, the Trade Federation’s viceroy.

“The slavers must have sold us to the Separatists,” Padmé whispers after the neimoidians have passed.

“But how would they have known who we were?” Anakin asks. “And how did they know to use the Force-inhibiting knockout gas, anyways?”

“Why did they even _have_ Force-inhibiting knockout gas?” Padmé counters. “How would slavers get a hold of something like that?”

Anakin grimaces. “There have been rumors of the Bando Gora developing something like this,” he says. “And they must have sold to Gardulla. There’ve been… a lot of Jedi killed by the Bando Gora.”

Padmé places a hand on Anakin’s arm. “Anyone you know?”

“Not personally,” he says, and leaves it at that. “My head’s feeling a little clearer, but… I still can’t reach the Force.”

“We’ll just have to make do,” Padmé says, her voice strong and her face determined and her hands only shaking a little bit.

Of all the things that Anakin is realizing he loves about Padmé, one of those things is her courage.

“We can’t just stay here and wait to be captured again,” she continues. “There’s no way that could end well, for either of us.”

“Should we try and track down… uh, Sarad?” Anakin asks. It seems safer to use Beru’s bounty hunting name, so nobody can trace her back to her family – though if she’s been captured, too, they might already know who she is.

Padmé nods. “The prison cells are far away from each other, probably by design. Or by accident, I can’t tell with these hive-systems.”

“So if we search the areas you haven’t been in yet, we might track her down,” Anakin says, and Padmé grins at him.

The one good thing about the hive-systems is that they have more hiding spaces and walkways that they can go through mostly unnoticed, except for stunning a few geonosians who wander into their path; the bad thing is that there’s no rhyme or reason to how the passages connect, or twist, or turn, and Anakin has no Force-sense to help them decide which way to go.

It takes hours, creeping their way through caves and corridors; they can’t talk, not loudly, but they can whisper to each other, and they do. Padmé tells him about growing up on Naboo and the youth government, and he tells her about the Jedi Temple, about the depths of Coruscant.

And after hours have passed, Anakin feels the tiniest flicker of the Force, and he nearly cries. He hadn’t realized how quiet it was until he could hear the Force again – it’s like taking a breath of air after drowning, the way he grasps at it.

Then he hears, like an echo down a tunnel, what it’s trying to tell him, and he nearly falls over.

“What is it?” Padmé glances up and down the corridor, then kneels down next to him – oh. He’s on the floor. “Anakin, what’s wrong?”

“It’s so dark here,” he says, and it feels almost like he’s choking on the darkness filling the air. How had he not _felt_ that before? “In the Force. It’s so _cold_.”

“Can you tell where we need to go?” Padmé asks, practical in this life-and-death situation.

Anakin breathes through the darkness, trying to keep it from sticking to him like bad air, and nods. “I think so,” he says. “Let’s go… left, here.”

It’s just the faintest thread, barely even a trail, but Anakin can feel where there’s a desert out of place – he can feel the traces of Tatooine that he shares with Beru. He can lead them to her.

He can also feel that something is wrong.

This must be the _bad feeling_ that Obi-Wan always talks about – Anakin can tell when something is wrong, yes, but that’s always more specific. This sense is so vague it almost hurts more than it helps.

Anakin really can’t wait for the rest of the Force inhibitor to wear off.

“There,” Padmé whispers, and points out a door. “That’s one of the prison cells. It must be hers. But where are the guards?”

There aren’t any geonosians at all in the corridor. Anakin can’t feel any close by in the Force, though to be fair he can’t feel much of anything, with the darkness clogging what little sense he has. “Whatever the reason is, we won’t have a better chance,” he says. “Let’s go.”

“What if it’s a trap?” Padmé says. “We can’t just rush in!”

Anakin pauses, because that is actually a good point. “Okay,” he says. “What do you suggest?”

Padmé thinks for a bit, her eyes flicking up and down the corridor, at the corners and the tunnels and the door. “We’ll spring the trap,” she says. “We can see who shows up and find out what they want.”

“If I loved you any less I’d point out that that’s exactly what I was about to do,” Anakin mutters.

Padmé flashes him a grin. “If I loved you any less, I’d point out that you were just going to go charging in, while I have an actual plan.”

“Of course,” Anakin says, mostly just resigned. “Lead the way, my lady.”

Padmé actually blushes, but moves out into the corridor before Anakin can say anything else.

It only takes Padmé a minute or two to break through the door’s lock, and it hisses open with a noise that sounds unusually loud in the silence of the hive.

There’s a gigantic bruise on Beru’s face, and she’s been stripped of her armor; even though she’s fully dressed, it almost looks like she’s naked, without that.

But worse, her eyes are wide with fear. “You _idiots_ , this is another trap!”

“We know that,” Anakin says, overlapping with Padmé’s “Wait, _another_?”

“They know everything,” Beru says, ignoring Padmé’s question. “They’ve got drugs to make you talk, to get into your _mind_ –”

“How do the Separatists have _those_?” Anakin demands.

“Not the Separatists,” Beru says. “The–”

There’s someone else in the corridor behind them.

Beru’s hands fly up to her neck, and she chokes; Anakin reaches down to help her, to try and pry the fingers of Force away from her neck, but he’s so weak, he _can’t_.

They loosen anyway, leaving Beru coughing and wheezing but alive.

“I couldn’t let you ruin my introduction, now, could I?” Says a darkly amused voice from the corridor. “You can put the blaster down, Senator, it won’t serve you here.”

Beru meets Anakin’s eyes and squeezes his forearm tightly; she’s breathing, however raggedly. Anakin squeezes back, then stands and turns to face the Sith.

She’s masked, a black, skull-looking mask, with two horns curving down the sides. Beyond that, all he can tell is that she is human, and that she’s amused.

“You Jedi, always having to save _everyone_ ,” she says, and there’s a touch of bitter fury behind her words but it’s gone before Anakin can really process it. “Walking right back into the web you’d almost escaped. Good for me, really.” She sighs, rolling her shoulders. “And here I was worried I’d have to exert myself.”

Anakin grits his teeth and stops himself from reaching for a lightsaber that isn’t there. If he can get close enough, though, maybe he can take hers, though…

He takes a step closer to the Sith. “What do you want?” He demands, Obi-Wan’s and his mother’s lessons echoing through his mind – keep the enemy talking, keep the enemy distracted.

“What do I _want_?” It wouldn’t be so bad if she just stopped sounding so _amused_ by them. “The answer, little Skywalker, is that I want _everything_ , and I will let nothing stop me, not the Jedi, not the Republic, and not your pathetic attempts to steal my lightsaber.”

Before Anakin can really process what’s happening he’s already hitting the back of the cell wall, but he can barely feel it because there’s lightning coursing through his veins, burning him up from the inside, over the sound of someone screaming. Maybe it’s him.

He lands in a heap, his skin buzzing and his bones shaking and his eyes shut tight. There’s the sound of a blaster going off and the hiss of an ignited lightsaber, deflecting the bolt into the wall; Anakin knows very well what that sounds like.

“I told you that was a bad idea,” the Sith say, and Anakin forces his eyes open, because _Padmé_ –

But she’s not being choked or electrocuted; the Sith is just pulling the weapon out of her hand, crushing it in the air and letting it fall to the ground like the useless slag it now is.

“Now, I’m going to lock you three up in this cell until our next round of visitors arrives,” the Sith says. “Be good, children, or else I get to have even more fun than I planned.” She turns and gestures, and ray shielding flickers to life where the door used to be.

“Wait!” Padmé calls out. “Who are you?”

The Sith pauses, and Anakin gets the sense that she’s smiling in a way doesn’t bode well for any of them. “I’ve carried many names throughout my lives. But now? Now I am Darth Vulsion.”

The cell door slams shut behind her, leaving them lit only by the dim overhead light and the ray shielding’s red glow.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is a little late! I hope you all enjoy it.
> 
> I will say, 'cause I've gotten a few questions about it, that Palpatine _is_ manipulating Anakin - we just haven't seen them on-screen (so to speak) together yet. (also I'm a complete doof and forgot that that was happening :P)

Geonosis is bright and sandy but not very hot; Shmi has been on enough different desert planets that this one doesn’t remind her of Tatooine.

“Geonosians are insectoid, I think,” Obi-Wan comments. “Flyers, with hives. There are rumors of a queen, but nothing confirmed; she might just be an urban legend, though.”

“Let’s not find out,” Jango says, his voice sounding from the comm Shmi had tied to her wrist, opposite the sling she still kept. “Are you in position?”

“Safe and landed in one of the steam vents,” Shmi confirms. From here, all they have to do is make their way through the droid factory and into the main hive, then track down the Sith and find out who they are, then successfully escape and bring the knowledge back to the Jedi.

Not exactly what Shmi would call _easy_ , but Jango’s mission is a lot more difficult; he’s met with the Sith before, but never been able to discover who she actually is. He needs to walk straight in and lie to her face, knowing that she knows he’ll be lying, and try and discover what the Sith’s plots are, all while keeping her distracted.

They’ve unanimously agreed to make Boba stay on the ship.

To Shmi’s and Jango’s surprise and vague suspicion, he’d agreed with only a few sullen glares. Boba had snapped that their plan was bad and that they were going to get caught, and not to blame him if he came to rescue them.

“All right, ad’ika,” Jango had said. “Just stay on the ship and be our getaway pilot; far more likely we’ll need one of those than a full-blown rescue.”

“Remember,” Boba says just before they end the holocall and leave hyperspace. “Plan for the plan to change, and–”

“I _taught you_ that lesson, ad’ika,” Jango says, and ruffles his hair.

Obi-Wan looks thoughtful, though; Shmi does get the feeling that the plan will be changing, quite a lot.

And now, looking at all the droids being produced, Shmi can’t help but think that a full-blown rescue might be necessary, given the scale of the operation going on here. And this is only an assembly line; there are sure to be whole other factories where parts are being manufactured and programmed and sent over here, and who knows how many other assembly plants they have?

“These droids are semi-autonomous,” Obi-Wan murmurs. “They’ll be able to function without a control ship, like the one Master Dooku destroyed on Naboo. They’ll be dumber without the ship, that’s for certain, but we’ll still need to go through and make sure all of them are deactivated, if it comes to a fight.”

Both of them know that it’s probably going to come to a fight.

It’s tricky work getting through the factory unnoticed, even for two Jedi Masters; between all the crushing and smashing going on in the assembly lines and the constantly moving assembly droids keeping an eye out for any discrepancies, Shmi has to utilize some of the ataru jumps and spins she’s still only half-learned.

“There are thousands of droids in there,” Shmi says once she and Obi-Wan are safe in the tunnels leading to the main hive. “Tens of thousands. And this can’t be the only factory on the planet.”

“They really are preparing for a full-scale war,” Obi-Wan says, sounding as if he’s only just realized this. “The clones on one side, the droids on the other. And with the Military Creation Act being voted on in a few days…”

Shmi’s never payed much attention to politics; she should, she knows, but it’s exhausting and disheartening and she has better things to do with her time. But she knows about the Military Creation Act. Padmé has been the leader of the section opposed to creating an army to fight the Separatists. With her missing, and two armies coming ready-made, it’s clear what the Senate will choose.

“We’ll just have to stop them, then,” Shmi says, sounding more confident than she feels. “We stop the Sith, deactivate the droids, and there will be no need for a galactic civil war.”

“I hope you’re right,” Obi-Wan says, then makes a motion for her to quiet down.

Shmi feels it half a second later – there are some beings just ahead.

Shmi and Obi-Wan press themselves into the shadows of the craggy corridors, doing their best to become nothing but another lump in the walls; it seems to work, for the neimoidians walk past without even glancing over at them.

“Rune Haako,” Shmi says, once they’ve passed. “Viceroy of the Trade Federation. He’s been in direct contact with Sidious, and we know that for certain.”

Obi-Wan flashes a grin at her. “Let’s see where he’s going, shall we?”

Shmi rolls her eyes and gestures for him to lead the way.

Haako leads them to a meeting-room, one that he pauses outside of, stopped by a geonosian guard.

The geonosian clicks something at him, gesturing him back with a spear.

“She requested my presence, holocall or not!” Haako protest. “I would not keep the lady waiting!”

The geonosian clicks something else, and Haako just huffs and settles himself outside the room, not quite content but willing to wait.

 _The nice thing about hive-dwelling species is that there are always multiple entrances to a room_ , Shmi whispers to Obi-Wan in their minds, and draws his attention up to a small passageway in the ceiling.

 _And yet they never seem to guard them. What an oversight_ , Obi-Wan replies, then jumps, pulling himself through the tunnel with the Force.

Shmi follows him, and they land in a small tunnel, not even lit, but with light and voices echoing from another room.

The sense of darkness is nearly overwhelming.

“–Could have distracted him more,” they hear a voice snap from the conference room.

The reply is indistinct, words with the tinny echo of a slightly-too-quiet hologram. On purpose, no doubt, to be unidentifiable. The two Jedi inch closer.

“I’ll take care of it. Next time, give me a little more warning – it’s not _my_ fault you weren’t carrying around a properly encrypted comm.”

Another reply, still indistinct.

“No, no, it just means my agents will have to handle it. Never fear, though, he won’t feel a thing. Now, I’ve got some guests of my own to deal with.”

Shmi and Obi-Wan glance at each other. Has she sensed them?

No, it turns out. At least, hopefully not; Rune Haako walks into the room, just as they reach a place where they can see the room itself. Jango follows him, and the Sith turns to greet them.

“Lady Vulsion,” Haako says, and bows; Jango copies him. “I’ve brought the bounty hunter; he has news–”

“Of Kamino, yes, I’m aware,” Vulsion says. “Tell me, Jango, how long have you been working against us?”

Jango freezes in place, surprised, and Shmi feels her grip tighten. They hadn’t thought that the Sith would get confrontational _that_ quickly.

“Working against you?” To Jango’s credit, he’s a wonderful liar. “Never, Lady.”

“Hmm.” Vulsion sighs, spinning her lightsaber in one hand, still unlit. “How would you explain your darling protégé’s words to me, though? She seemed quite convinced that there was a conspiracy going on, you see. And given the presence of not one but _three_ Jedi interfering in my operations, I can’t help but wonder.” Now she ignites her lightsaber, a burst of red light held right beneath the chin of Jango’s helmet. “Explain.”

Three Jedi? Shmi exchanges a glance with Obi-Wan, but he seems as confused as she is.

“I can’t say I know about three Jedi being here,” Jango says calmly. “But I figured the best way to get rid of the two that found Kamino was to take them straight to you, and this seemed the simplest way to do it. They should be lurking around here somewhere.”

“They are,” Vulsion says, and Shmi can see her reach back and _pull_.

The ground beneath them crumbles; Shmi scrambles back as fast as she can, but it’s not going to be fast enough, and Obi-Wan is closer than she is–

And as Obi-Wan falls, he shoves her back with the Force, on to more solid ground.

Shmi turns and runs, and can only hope that Obi-Wan will be all right.

She has another job to do.

 

* * *

 

 

Five hours in to being stuck in a cell with Padmé and Beru, Anakin is already bored completely out of his mind. He’s meditated, discussed potential strategies with Padmé and Beru, helped them come up with various insulting names for Darth Vulsion, meditated some more, paced the cell, tried and failed to trick the door into opening, taught Padmé some Huttese with Beru’s help, and has finally sat against a wall, his back on the floor and his legs up in the air.

The walls of the cell are smooth – no sharp crags to break away and turn into a weapon. The door is ray-shielded, so there’s no breaking through that.

There’s nothing they can do but wait.

“All right,” Beru says, apropos of nothing. “Padmé, what’s your… favorite color?”

“Blue,” Padmé says. “Yours?”

“I’ve always been partial to green and yellow,” Beru says. “Ani? How about you?”

“Colors are stupid,” Anakin says.

“Oh, go pace some more,” Beru snaps. “I forgot how bad you got when we were cooped up inside.”

Anakin had honestly forgotten how bad he got cooped up inside, too.

At least he can feel the Force again, though he can’t feel anything except Vulsion’s darkness.

Wait. No. There’s something else, he realizes. Something familiar.

_Mom?_

_Ani!_

Anakin tries to sit upright, forgetting that he’s on the ground with his feet up, and ends up mostly just sideways. Then he scrambles up, getting Padmé’s and Beru’s attention.

“I can hear my mom,” he says, and reaches out to her again. _What’s going on?_

 _A lot more than we originally suspected_ , she says, her mental voice grim. _Vulsion – you’ve met her? – she has Obi-Wan, and I don’t know if I can get to him. Where are you?_

 _Trapped in a cell,_ he replies. _Padmé and Beru and I are all here. Be careful – Vulsion’s buying drugs from the Bando Gora, and they’ve got some nasty ones that will knock you out and cut you off from the Force for hours_.

 _I’ll be careful. Show me where you are,_ Shmi says.

Anakin does.

“She’s coming,” he says. “Obi-Wan’s here, too, but captured.”

Beru grimaces. “That’s really not good,” she says. “She’s got death-sticks, the nasty kind that people call the Mind Trick. Combined with her _actual_ mind-trick…” Beru looks down. “I told her _everything_.”

Padmé places a hand on Beru’s shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault. I’ll admit I haven’t heard of these drugs before, but they can make you do things you don’t want to, can’t they?”

Beru nods. “That’s probably how they found Storm’s Eye,” she says. “Picked up one of the folk they’d freed, someone who was working with the Freedom Trail, and…”

Anakin kneels down by Beru, parallel to Padmé, and places his hand on her other shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” he insists. “And we’ll get out of here, and go back, and make it all right. And we’ll free _everyone_.”

Beru looks up at Padmé, then at Anakin, then grins. “We will, won’t we,” she says. “With you two and your mother, what _can’t_ we do?”

They sit like that, crouched in the red half-light, waiting for Shmi to come. Anakin hates – _greatly dislikes_ – waiting, but he can stand it, knowing that his mother is on the way, however long it takes.

Unfortunately, they all know that the hives aren’t the easiest to navigate. It takes Shmi an hour just to get far enough away from Vulsion that she’s sure she won’t be followed, then two more (with false starts) to get to somewhere Anakin recognizes.

Vulsion could be doing _anything_ to Obi-Wan in this time, Anakin thinks, and tries to let go of the anger welling up inside him. He’s doing all he can, and they _will_ save Obi-Wan, and they _will_ get out of here safely.

An hour later, though, just as Shmi is nearing their cell, Anakin can feel a flash of fear in her mind.

 _What’s happening?_ He asks, but he can only feel her hiding herself, doing her best to be unnoticeable.

The door slides open and the ray-shielding flickers off – but Anakin’s mother isn’t the one standing there.

 _We’re being moved_ , Anakin tells his mom, _I don’t know where, or why_ –

 _I’m following you,_ Shmi says. _I will get you out of here, I promise, stay safe, my son_ –

The worst part is when the geonosians separate Beru from them.

They don’t have any choice but to watch her go, prodded into other corridors by the geonosian blasters, leaving Anakin and Padmé alone. Anakin wants to fight, wants to grab a blaster and go save Beru, but Padmé’s strong grip on his hand doesn’t let him, and he knows that he can’t leave her alone, either.

 _Beru can handle herself_ , Shmi whispers to him. _We will all get out of here, alive and safe_.

It’s starting to sound more and more like a lie.

“We’re not going to die here,” he says aloud, and that sounds like a lie, too.

“And if we do?” Padmé is quiet.

All Anakin can do is hold her hand tighter, try and convince himself that they can stay like this forever.

Anakin looks down at Padmé, and Padmé looks up at him.

He bends down a little, and she leans up, and they kiss. It feels like hope, it feels like a thousand possibilities for the future, it feels like all he’s ever wanted.

They pull apart as they’re drawn into the arena, and Anakin is glad that he had this chance, at least.

Obi-Wan looks worn, but not injured; mostly, he looks regretful, as Anakin is chained to the column next to his.

“I suppose this is a rather lackluster rescue,” he says. “Always look on the bright side, though; it could be worse.”

Three gates creak open on the other side of the arena.

Out charges an acklay, a nexu, and a reek. Anakin can’t help but feeling a little sorry for the reek; from its red color, it’s been starved and fed meat. To highten its aggression, probably, he thinks. He can’t bring himself to feel _very_ sorry, not when it’s about to kill him.

“How could this be worse?” Anakin snaps.

“Well, Padmé could not know how to pick locks, for one,” Obi-Wan says, and Anakin glances over.

Padmé is beautiful, standing at the top of the column, the chain in her hands and her wrists freed.

They might even survive this arena, Anakin thinks, and it almost doesn’t feel like a lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I answered some prompts about the Jedi Shmi AU on my tumblr! (okay technically they were just questions but I turned them into prompts because I was bored.) About [Shmi](http://mirandatam.tumblr.com/post/148861213022/jedi-shmi-8-indulgence) and [Beru and Zevem](http://mirandatam.tumblr.com/post/148869468157/same-au-beru-22-paper-pencil-zevem-24-38). I'm almost always accepting prompts about this AU and any of my other fandoms, because I like to distract myself from my responsibilities :D


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle in the arena

Shmi waits to leave her hiding spot until Anakin has freed himself from the chains. Then she lets herself breathe again.

Then she goes to find Beru.

It’s not a hard task; Darth Vulsion has been keeping Jango close, and if she’s been tricked or at least stalled by his lies, then she’ll probably have agreed to keep Beru close, as well.

Also, even with Jango standing beside Vulsion, watching over the arena, she can see that he keeps glancing back into the corridor behind him.

Most of the geonosians are focused on the spectacle in the arena; it gives Shmi an easier time sneaking up, at least.

Beru has her armor back, Shmi sees when she gets close enough down the dark corridor that the arena’s light spills in, leaving long shadows of Vulsion and Jango.

She’s also handcuffed, though a slight bit of motion suggests that she’s in the process of picking the cuffs.

“Here,” Shmi says quietly, and Beru whirls around. Shmi takes her hands, looks at the cuffs in the Force, and _pulls_. They click open.

“Nice trick, Master Skywalker,” Beru says, just as quietly. “Ani’s in the arena, they’re going to send droids out to finish them off. We need to hurry.”

“Are the comm units in your helmet still working?” Shmi asks, but Beru shakes her head. “All right. Any weaponry?”

“They didn’t find my knives,” Beru says proudly. “And I think there’s a way I can rig the geonosian blasters to explode.”

“Good,” Shmi says. “Get down to the arena. Hold the droids off for as long as you can; I’m going to confront Vulsion.”

Beru grips Shmi’s arm tightly. “Be careful,” she says. “She’s got some scary stuff from the Bando Gora.”

“I will be,” Shmi says. “You as well, Beru. Watch your step on the shifting sands.”

“May the burning winds clear your path,” Beru says, the traditional reply. “And… may the Force be with you.”

She turns and runs before Shmi can reply.

Jango hasn’t noticed Shmi’s presence, yet; he’s been watching the arena, his posture relaxed but his hands clenched tight. She can feel his fear and disgust radiating from here. If she’d had even the tiniest suspicion that his earlier words to Vulsion had been truth, that he’d lured them there and was loyal to Vulsion, it would have vanished. Jango is scared for his family, and though he hides any sign, it shows in the Force.

Vulsion knows, too, she thinks grimly. Best get him out of there.

It takes her a few quiet steps to approach the box where Vulsion stands with Jango and the geonosian leader; only one more to enter, turn and extend her lightsaber up to Vulsion’s neck.

The arena quiets.

Shmi can see, from the corner of her eye, Ani and Padmé riding on the reek and Obi-Wan on the ground, surrounded by dozens of battle droids. She doesn’t see Beru yet.

“Ah, Master Skywalker,” Darth Vulsion says, ignoring the blade at her throat. “I’ve been wanting to meet you. I’ve heard so much, you see.”

“I can’t say the same, unfortunately,” Shmi says, her lightsaber not wavering an inch.

Vulsion just smirks – Shmi can tell, even beneath the mask – and ignites her own lightsaber, burning red, looking like an open wound crossed against Shmi’s green.

They exchange a few blows, attack-parry-riposte, and Shmi can _feel_ Vulsion’s amusement as they spin slightly, turning around each other like a black hole and a star. There are a few echos of blaster-fire around them; it seems that Jango’s revealed that he’s on their side, and is helping take care of the geonosians.

“It’s nice to fight someone halfway competent, for once,” Vulsion comments idly. “None of the lackeys I have are particularly, hmm, competent. You’ll be seeing so soon enough.”

She swings her saber around in a move that Shmi recognizes, and knows how to block. Barely. Shmi moves in, her footwork sharp and her lightsaber precise, and Vulsion expertly blocks.

“Will I?” Shmi asks, keeping her voice calm and neutral, despite the stress of the battle.

“If you live long enough,” Vulsion says, and her lightsaber _twists_ and Shmi’s lightsaber goes flying down into the arena.

But Shmi has known that Vulsion is a superior fighter. There’s no way she would have kept her lightsaber.

Her sling is already swinging in her hand, a plasma stone ready to release, and she snaps it out towards Vulsion.

The Sith dodges, of course, but she cuts through the plasma stone, thinking it a simple rock, a detonator at most.

Plasma, when swiftly decompressed and exposed to a heat source, ignites.

Shmi uses the momentum to leap down into the arena, slowing her fall with the Force. She’s mildly scorched, but has no severe burns; she sincerely hopes that the same cannot be said for Vulsion.

She lands with a thump next to Obi-Wan, who’s used her lightsaber to free Anakin and himself; Jango hovers in the air above them, his jetpack and armor sporting a few new blaster scorches but no real damage, his guns pointed straight at the droids. The geonosian leader is dead, in the box above.

Shmi drops another plasma stone into her sling and starts spinning it slowly, in preparation. The droids surround them, each one with a blaster pointing in at her, at her family.

Darth Vulsion descends slowly, the Force whirling around her, whipping up the dust. Her lightsaber is a melted hunk of slag, Shmi is satisfied to see, and her right glove has been burned off, leaving a pale, scarred hand visible.

“You won’t get away with this–” Ani starts to say, and Shmi will lecture her son later about what a bad idea it is to get a Sith’s attention.

Vulsion barely glances at him before flinging a handful of lightning.

Above the blood pounding in her ears, Shmi can hear her son scream, can hear Padmé shriek.

The reek bucks, unwilling to tolerate the burning electricity on its back, and dumps Anakin and Padmé in the dirt before charging through the ranks of droids. It doesn’t make it very far.

Shmi is at her son’s side as he stops convulsing, the sling still tight in her hand but no longer moving. She kneels down next to him; he’s still alive, but in pain.

Shmi meets Padmé’s eyes, and sees that same pain in them.

She stands.

Padmé is with Ani, holding him tight. Shmi turns and faces Darth Vulsion.

Obi-Wan, at her side, offers her lightsaber, the one he’s been holding at the ready; she shakes her head. He’s for the most part a better duelist than her; the only reason they match each other is that Makashi is meant for dueling, and that won’t give Shmi much help against battle droids.

Shmi starts spinning her sling again, slowly, surely, picking up speed.

Vulsion is shaking with fury, the burning plasma eating into her arm, her clothes, her mask. Shmi can see the glow of her eyes, toxic amber, though not any of her other features. Lightning crackles in both her hands, twisting and spilling to the ground.

Shmi has given herself the armor of a krayt dragon, in mind – but she has never thought of herself as one, not as she sees the all-consuming flame in Vulsion’s soul. Vulsion _is_ one of the dragons from her dream, she knows, one of the dragons which roar out their fury and scorch the sands, as Vulsion is doing right now – but which?

“I will _destroy you_ ,” she snarls.

There’s a small thunk, and the sound of something rolling across the sand. A high-pitched beeping starts up, soon joined by more beeping, and more.

Shmi can’t sense any detonators, and those have a clear sense in the force, like the beforemath of an explosion. But there’s beeping. What…?

The beeping cuts out.

Then, with a giant crackle-hum, every single droid in the arena stops functioning.

“Sorry I’m late,” Boba says from behind the ranks of collapsed battle-droids. “Next time, I’m just going to plan for a full-blown rescue from the beginning, okay?”

“I wouldn’t call it full-blown unless you’ve got some way to get _out_ of here,” Obi-Wan points out, as the only one not left staring in confusion at the unexpected turnaround.

Boba gives him a look. “What do you take me for, an amateur?”

Now that Shmi’s listening, she can hear the roar of Jango’s ship’s engines, and feel Beru’s bright presence getting closer and closer.

The _Slave I_ roars into the arena, blasting at what sections of the geonosians haven’t fled yet. Jango jets over to Boba and grabs him, carrying him up to the ship’s lowering ramp.

“Who’s shooting?” Shmi can hear him shout above the engines.

“Sarad!” Boba yells back.

“Then who’s _piloting_?”

“Artoo, duh!”

Then Shmi and Obi-Wan are busy dealing with a lightning-wielding Sith Lady.

Obi-Wan brings up the lightsaber to block the lightning in time, but only barely; Shmi can see it stinging his hands and tunic as the lightsaber absorbs most of the energy.

Shmi knows better than to sling a plasma stone at lightning, possibly the only thing that would make it explode more than a blaster bolt; it seems that Vulsion knows better than to throw her lightning at Shmi for the same reasons, leaving them in a standoff.

“Your precious Temple will burn, and I will be there to see it,” Vulsion says, her voice quiet and vicious. “I will make your Republic crumble beneath your feet, and we will rule the galaxy in chaos and destruction!”

Padmé has carried Ani on the ship; they’re ready to go, except for Shmi and Obi-Wan.

“Hurry!” Boba yells.

Shmi can see it happen, almost in slow motion; a tiny dart, small enough to be concealed in Vulsion’s hand, flies out, tracing the path of the lightning. She reaches out to grab it with the Force, push it away, but it’s small and it’s fast. She manages the tiniest of nudges.

The poison dart buries itself in Obi-Wan’s leg.

He’s blasted back by the lightning a moment after, as he stumbles and the lightsaber drops. But Jango is there already, hoisting him up and flying up and away. Shmi jumps, a force-boosted leap, and lands lightly on the ship’s ramp as Jango brings Obi-Wan in.

She risks one glance back at Vulsion, at that cracked black mask showing one amber eye, at her pale skin, eaten away by plasma burns and old scars.

The ramp closes, blocking Vulsion from her view, securing them in the ship.

Shmi takes a moment to lean against the walls. What was _that_?

Then Obi-Wan moans.

Shmi is at his side in an instant, reaching out with tendrils of the Force to see what’s made its way into his bloodstream.

Whatever it is, it _burns_.

Shmi reaches in.

This was the first thing she’d learned. Back on Tatooine, with Qui-Gon Jinn, she had meditated, and in her own body she’d found the transmitter, found the aberration, and with a knife taken it out.

It’s been ten years since she first learned that. She no longer needs a knife.

She takes hold of the poison and pulls it out of Obi-Wan’s leg, droplet by droplet. She doesn’t know how long it takes her. She doesn’t know what damage it’s done to his leg, how long it will take him to heal; she does know that it has done damage. Nothing burns like that and leaves no trace.

She does know that she’s kept it from spreading beyond his leg.

Shmi wants to collapse when she’s finally done, Obi-Wan unconscious from the pain on the floor of the ship, Jango kneeling beside her, a comforting presence.

“I’ll get him to a bunk,” Jango says quietly, carefully lifting Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan doesn’t stir.

Shmi leans against the ship’s durasteel-grey walls, vibrating with the hum of the engines. They’re in hyperspace. Safe.

With the engine’s lullaby to sing her to sleep, Shmi drifts off, and doesn’t dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friday's chapter might be a little late, i.e. friday afternoon or saturday morning. I've got a lot going on these next few days.
> 
> I think we're nearing the wrap-up of this story, then there's probably going to be another one-shot (I'm calling them "interludes" in my head). I don't know if I'm going to have the majority of the Clone Wars be one-shots, or be a big long story, or have a big story then post one-shots when I feel like it for CW events that aren't necessary to the timeline. I don't know! We'll find out :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to the Temple. There are consequences.

It takes them eighteen hours to get from Geonosis to Coruscant. Shmi spends most of it asleep; she wakes when they’re an hour out to find that Obi-Wan’s condition hasn’t changed, but that Anakin has woken up.

She listens to him as he tells her about Storm’s Eye, about the freedom trail and about how it all fell apart.

He listens as she talks about Kamino, about the army of clones. An army of slaves.

“Did you at least punch him?” Ani demands, when he hears what Jango has done.

“Of course,” Shmi says. “Right in the face.”

“Good,” Ani says. “Though you know the face isn’t the best place–”

“I know,” Shmi says, and hugs her son. “Ani, I was so _worried_ about you. All we knew was that you were on Tatooine, and something had gone wrong. I was worried…” She trails off. They both know what she means.

Ani nods. “I’m going to need to go back,” he says, his face and his tone serious. “Kitster, old Jira, almost all of Storm’s Eye was taken. Maybe… maybe because of us.”

Shmi shakes her head, making sure to look Ani in the eye. “Not because of you,” she says. “That may be the excuse they use, and maybe your presence there prompted the timing. But Beru says that they must have already known the location, that they’d likely drugged someone into revealing it some time ago. They were planning that for a long time, Ani. You didn’t cause it.”

“It still feels like I did,” Ani admits. “But… I understand. I still need to go save them all, though.”

Shmi squeezes his hand. “It’s very likely that I’ll be joining you. Now. Tell me about you and Padmé.”

Anakin sighs. “She’s… she’s amazing. I love her. We talked about it, about trying to… be together, but she said that for both our sakes, it would have to be a secret, or at least somewhat hidden. She doesn’t want to do that. But then, before the arena, we thought we were going to die. We kissed. I… I don’t know what we are to each other, or what to do about all of this.”

Shmi nods, then pulls her son into a hug. He relaxes in her arms; this is a sign to both of them that it’s truly safe here. “The most important thing in any relationship, romantic or friendly or anything else, is _communication_. If you’re not sure what to do, tell her that. If you want to have a romantic relationship, tell her that; it’s hard, being so upfront, but you know how to let go of your fear, Ani. It’s much better than dancing around, never quite sure of what the other person is saying.”

“But what about the Order?” Ani asks, the tension clear in his voice. “I don’t _want_ to leave. I want to stay a Jedi. But the Council…”

“That question is one best talked out with Obi-Wan,” Shmi says.

“But he’s so… _responsible_ ,” Ani says. “Everyone looks up to him! If I tell him, he could be the first to kick me out!”

Shmi leans back from the hug to look Ani straight in the eyes. “Do you really think that Obi-Wan will abandon you, just like that?”

Ani stares at her for a long moment, then looks down. “No,” he mutters. “He would… worry about it, first. He’d think of what to say to me.” A tiny grin crosses Ani’s face. “He has no clue what to do about romance. He’d go talk to Master Qui-Gon, or to you…” Ani trails off. “He wouldn’t kick me out, or abandon me. He’d just… try to find the right path.”

“So what are you going to do now?” Shmi asks.

“When we get to Coruscant, we need to get him to the infirmary,” Anakin says, taking a deep breath. “Beru looked him over with the medkit they’ve got, he keeps going into shock but she’s able to get him out of it pretty quickly. But that’s still a temporary fix. He needs real healers. We can worry about the rest later.”

Shmi rests her forehead against Ani’s. “Good. You’re growing, Ani, in wisdom and patience. Two things you’re going to need, if things keep going badly.”

“ _We’re coming out of hyperspace,_ ” Jango announces over the speakers. “ _In three… two… one._ ”

“ _Welcome to Coruscant!_ ” Boba finishes.

“ _We’re going to need the clearance codes to approach the Jedi Temple_ ,” Jango says. “ _So if one of you could come up here…_ ”

“I’ll go,” Shmi and her son say simultaneously.

“ _Why don’t you both come up here,_ ” Boba says. “ _If not you’ll spend hours arguing about who it should be, and we don’t have that kind of time._ ”

Shmi sighs. Children.

“We’re on our way,” says Ani.

The cockpit is cramped, with five of them in there – Beru is sitting with Obi-Wan, ready to call Shmi if his condition changes, but Padmé had wanted to know more about Jango and Boba.

“Do you have clearance to approach the Jedi Temple, Firespray-31 class craft?” A clearly bored mechanical voice asks over the comms as the ship descends into Coruscant’s atmosphere.

“We do,” Shmi says, and leans forward towards the comm. “Code Jenth-Mem-Esk nine-nine-three, order one.” The code for an urgent Jedi medical emergency.

“Of course,” the voice says, sounding somewhat shaken. “Master Jedi, a medical team will be waiting for you upon landing. Please proceed to hangar three.”

Shmi is down the ramp and out of the ship the moment they’ve landed, Beru following closely behind her, Obi-Wan limp in the bounty hunter’s arms.

“Unknown toxin, likely manufactured, at the very least painful,” she says to the medical team surrounding Obi-Wan. “I pulled it out of his bloodstream, but the dart landed in his leg, the poison made it about halfway up his thigh at the furthest.”

“Do you have whatever it was that you pulled out?” A healer asks.

Shmi hands over the small vial she’d siphoned the poison off into. At the time all she’d been thinking of was making sure it didn’t get all over the floor; there was no way of knowing whether contact was enough for it to hurt.

Shmi walks with the medical team all the way back to the infirmary. It’s only when Obi-Wan is moved into a sterilized room and she can’t follow that she realizes that something is wrong.

The Temple is too empty.

The initiate clans roving about are wide-eyed, and the remaining knights and masters clump together, speaking to each other in hushed whispers and trailing anxious young padawans behind them. And it is mostly Jedi with younger padawans. The only Jedi without padawans are the elderly Jedi, or Jedi with difficulties traveling or fighting.

Even the Council is gone.

Even Yoda.

Shmi snags a healer-apprentice, running to and fro, and realizes that she’s pulled over one of her strays. One of the older initiates, she corrects herself, though he’s been apprenticed by a healer recently.

“Elorin,” she says. “What’s going on? Where is everyone?”

Elorin’s eyes grow wide. “You haven’t heard? No, you’ve been in hyperspace, haven’t you. There’s been a declaration of war!”

“ _What_?” Shmi actually almost takes a step back. “How?”

“The Separatists have declared independence from the Republic,” Elorin says. “They’re calling themselves the Confederacy of Independent Systems. There’s been a huge battle on Muunilinst. Master Vos was there first, and he said that things were getting heated, so Knights Tachi and Secura went to join him, then things got even worse. They sent over ten extra Jedi, then suddenly there are calls talking about a droid army, and the Jedi being almost overwhelmed, then Master Yoda made a call to a planet called Kamino and suddenly half the Order was flying over. The Military Creation Act passed,” he says, almost as an afterthought.

Shmi… Shmi doesn’t know quite what to think. She leans against a wall as Elorin goes back to running messages for the healers.

Everything feels quiet around her. Not quiet in the way the temple is quiet, but… distant. Fuzzy.

That had been the original plan for Geonosis, she thinks. Trap some Jedi, start a war. But they’d stopped it. They’d _stopped_ it. And for what?

For the Sith to have yet another backup plan.

For the Jedi to use an army of slaves.

For the galaxy to be at war.

Shmi straightens up, the world around her still far away, and walks out of the infirmary. Up the floors, through the corridors, out to a garden. It’s a garden that she’s made, that she’s programmed in the environmental controls and found the seeds for.

Gnarled ginsu grows next to sharp kaktru, interspersed with vibrant beru. Shmi kneels down in the sand, like and unlike the sand that her son had so recently been captured in.

She meditates, the sand particles slowly spinning around her, drifting in patterns like asteroids around a star. She thinks about what she can do, and how she can do it.

There’s no doubt that she’ll have a lot of work to do, now that the Clone Wars have begun.

 

* * *

 

 

The injured start trickling in just hours later, just as Shmi, Anakin, and the Fetts are standing outside the room Obi-Wan is lying unconscious in, hearing what the healers have to say.

“A nasty poison,” the healer snaps, their mouth a grim line. “Corrosive, in part, yes, but with some unusual–” they took a breath. “It is highly unlikely that Master Kenobi will be able to walk without assistance for quite some time, if ever. The damage to the blood vessels in his leg is severe, and there is significant damage to the musculature as well. The best–”

The light in the infirmary flickers orange once, twice, three times.

The healer swears, a long, ranting tirade that meanders from basic to scalding Bocce. “That’s the priority two incoming injured,” they say. “I’ll send you the–” The lights flicker again, two red blinks. “Apajono kadinger, three in one _day_?”

“It’s the ones who went off to Muunilinst!” Another healer calls back to them. “Get the bacta ready, there’ll be a lot of blaster burns!”

“Can we–” Shmi begins. _Help_ was going to be the last word, but apparently the healers hear it often enough to interrupt her.

“No,” a healer says kindly. “We’ve got an organized system; we won’t need to pull in other Jedi unless things get very bad, and that’s never happened that I’ve seen. Still, if it would help you feel better, you may wait outside the infirmary or in the hangar to be on-call for such emergencies.”

Then Shmi and Anakin are left alone with the Fetts, as the infirmary hurries around them and casually, casually, pushes them out the door.

“I’ll go to the hangar,” Ani says.

“And I’ll wait here,” Shmi finishes. She exchanges a glance with her son; both of them can feel the tense hum of the Force, can feel that something is wrong.

“We’ll just… go check in with Padmé?” Jango suggests, his stance and his tone awkward and out-of-place.

“Tell her I said hello!” Ani calls back as he starts towards the hangar.

“You saw her four hours ago,” Jango grumbles. “Ah, whatever. Come on, Boba.”

Shmi isn’t left alone in the hallway for long.

A medical team rushes past barely minutes after the Fetts leave, a Jedi moaning on a stretcher; Shmi can feel their pain as they pass her, and smell the stench of burnt flesh. Another goes by seconds later, and finally a third–

Siri.

Shmi can see her for a moment through the crowd of healers as she’s floated into the infirmary. There’s dirt and scorch marks across her body, but the worst part is her legs. Well, what’s left of them.

Everything starts to blur after that; Aayla Secura comes up and waits with Shmi. Apparently Quinlan is still out on Muunilinst, along with most of the council, or maybe he’s taken a legion (battalion? some sort of group) of clones out to one of the other planets that’s broken out into open rebellion.

“It was a nightmare,” Aayla says quietly, and Shmi pulls her into a shaking hug, this girl barely older than Ani, knighted not even two months ago.

Shmi and Aayla are joined by Plo Koon, limping but not badly enough to need the healers, not with all the Jedi in critical condition. Together, they keep watch as Jedi after Jedi is floated on a stretcher into the infirmary. Together, they keep watch as fewer Jedi walk out.

Four hours into this, Beru calls her, crying, and it takes Shmi longer than it should to realize they’re tears of joy.

“They’re all out,” Beru says, almost incoherently. “ _All_ of them, Mom and Sala and Darvin and everyone else, Boba says he had a plan and a few of the clones went out and got them off-planet before the Sith could retaliate. They’re _safe_.”

Oh, Shmi thinks. _Oh_. A smile blooms on her face for the first time in hours. Boba had mentioned having lots of backup plans. One of them must have been some sort of cut-and-run sign, for some of the clones to take all the tatooinians on Kamino and to run to where the Sith couldn’t reach them.

Beru’s family is safe. Beru is _free_.

“Master Jedi,” an exhausted healer says. “We could… we could use some assistance.”

Shmi feeds the healers energy, feeds them hope. She also feeds them soup, because they’ve all, to a healer, forgotten to eat.

Shmi doesn’t blame them. It’s been frantic. Busy. Tense.

She isn’t particularly strong in the Force; her mastery of it comes in her precise control. Anakin, now… he comes up to the infirmary, and he opens himself up for the healers to use, and it’s like there’s a star burning in the middle of the Temple, bright and eternal.

Shmi sits back and lets Ani do the heavy lifting.

She doesn’t know how long it’s been when she hears the shuffle-tap of small feet and a cane on tile, and turns to see Yoda.

He looks around the infirmary silently; it’s quieter now, the rush somewhat abated, but still full of badly wounded Jedi and exhausted healers.

“A mistake, I made,” he says quietly, “In bringing the clone army to Muunilinst.”

“You saved Jedi lives,” Shmi says quietly. It’s not a no. It’s not a yes.

“And ended clone ones,” he says. “Begun, the war has. My fault, in part, this is.”

Shmi closes her eyes and leans back. “You think the Sith wouldn’t have found a way to introduce the army anyways?” She says, quiet and tired. “Do you really think they would have let them just stay on Kamino, however hard we tried?”

“Thought on this, you have,” Yoda says.

“This is an army of slaves,” Shmi says. “I will help free them. Will you oppose me on this?”

A three-clawed hand is laid on her knee. “Think so little of us, do you,” Yoda says softly, “That an army of the unwilling, we will keep?”

“I think that the Republic is desperate enough,” Shmi says. “Jedi lives were at risk, so you brought them an army.” It is not _quite_ a condemnation.

Yoda sighs, long and old. “Mistakes, I have made,” he says. “Mistakes, I will make again. What would you have me do?”

Shmi is opening her mouth to reply when Yoda pokes at her with his gimer stick. Not a friendly whack, as he aims at unruly apprentices or foolish masters; even from the beginning it has been unsaid but known that even that would be too much for her.

“Rhetorical, that was not,” he says. “A complaint, that was _not_. Padawan of mine, wise, you are. Your guidance, we will need, to survive this. I ask again, Master Skywalker: _What would you have us do_?”

Shmi opens her eyes, and sits up. She looks her teacher in the eye.

They have always learned from each other. He has taught her strength and confidence; she has taught him acceptance, how to have the self-knowledge to admit that a decision was wrong.

He has learned well. So has she.

It’s with the certainty of a Jedi Master that she tells him, “We help them become free.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that didn't end too abruptly. I've never been good with wrap-up, but this isn't really an end, is it? It's like that awkward middle bit where you pause and have to have a satisfying conclusion that's somehow also a hook?
> 
> Anyway, the next segment will be up in the nebulous ~*~sometime~*~ of the future. If you have questions or prompts about this AU or about the various OCs who I've barely even hinted at and who might not be showing up in this fic anyways, I'm as always on [tumblr](http://mirandatam.tumblr.com).
> 
> If you have guesses about who the spy is, or who Vulsion is, or _anything_ , please don't feel too ignored if I just sort of ignore those. I'm really really bad at lying, whether the truth is a no or a yes. I just get too excited and want to tell everyone everything that will happen, and that wouldn't be fun at all!
> 
> Thank you all so much - the people who have given me kudos, thank you. The people who have bookmarked this, you're all wonderful. The people who have left a comment or two, I love you all. The people who have commented every single chapter, you're amazing, you give me life, you have helped me keep up a pace and keep this story going.
> 
> You're all brilliant. See you all soon! (though in all seriousness I go back to college in two weeks so things are probably going to slow down a bit)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr!](http://mirandatam.tumblr.com)


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